Having complained of people posting off topic, it seems a reasonable solution to give an opportunity for people to discuss the topics I am banning from other threads – of which 9/11 seems the most popular.
I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. There are some strange and dangerous people in America, but not in sufficient concentration for this one. They couldn’t even keep Watergate quiet, and that was a small group. Any group I can think of – even Blackwater – would contain operatives with scruples about blowing up New York. They may be sadly ready to kill people in poor countries, but Americans en masse? Somebody would say it wasn’t a good idea.
I asked a friend in the construction industry what it would take to demolish the twin towers. He replied nine months, 80 men, and 12 miles of cabling. The notion that a small team at night could plant sufficient explosives embedded at key points, is laughable.
The forces of the aircraft impacts must have been amazingly high. I have no difficulty imagining they would bring down the building. As for WTC 7, again the kinetic energy of the collapse of the twin towers must be immense.
I admit to a private speculation about WTC7. Unfortunately in construction it is extremely common for contractors not to fix or install properly all the expensive girders, ties and rebar that are supposed to be enclosed in the concrete. Supervising contractors and municipal inspectors can be corrupt. I recall vividly that in London some years ago a tragedy occurred when a simple gas oven explosion brought down the whole side of a tower block.
The inquiry found that the building contractor had simply omitted the ties that bound the girders at the corners, all encased in concrete. If a gas oven had not blown up, nobody would have found out. Buildings I strongly suspect are very often not as strong as they are supposed to be, with contractors skimping on apparently redundant protection. The sort of sordid thing you might not want too deeply investigated in the event of a national tragedy.
Precisely what happened at the Pentagon I am less sure. There is not the conclusive film and photographic evidence that there is for New York. I am particularly puzzled by the much more skilled feat of flying that would be required to hit a building virtually at ground level, in an urban area, after a lamppost clipping route – very hard to see how a non-professional pilot did that. But I can think of a number of possible scenarios where the official explanation is not quite the whole truth on the Pentagon, but which do not necessitate a belief that the US government or Dick Cheney was behind the attack.
In my view the real scandal of 9/11 was that it was blowback – the product of a malignant terrorist agency whose origins lay in CIA funding and provision. Also blowback in a more general sense that it was spawned in the nasty theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which is so close to the US and to the Bush dynasty in particular. As with almost all terrorist activity, I do not rule out any point on the whole spectrum of surveillance, penetration and agent provocateur activity by any number of possible actors.
But was 9/11 false flag and controlled demolition? No, I think not.
(Now I have given full opportunity to discuss 9/11 here, any further references on other threads will be instantly deleted).
Las Vegas Shooting survivors in the News again, for not surviving too long; seems to be a curse !;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5117991/Las-Vegas-massacre-survivor-killed-hit-run.html
How many have died out of how many survivors? And of those who have died, how many due to complications eg. dying of their injuries?
How many died?
Why the MSM is no better, well actually a lot worse, than you are;
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/you-are-infinitely-more-qualified-to-report-the-news-than-these-assholes-839c0ca010be
Caitlin Johnstone criticism of CNN is good, but she seems a bit shouty and it’s a shame she pitched the article as if Trump is a good thing.
More importantly, the article doesn’t address the problem of editorial policy. Now I know editorial policy works quite badly in the mass news media, though it does apply some useful constraints; they can’t just invent what people have said, for instance. But it’s even worse in the new media, taken as a whole. Obviously there is much material in the new media which is very much better, Consortium News for instance, but the trouble is that if you take a random sample from search results or YouTube suggestions, you’re far more likely to get something that’s just invented than something like Consortium News.
We need to do more than merely expressing our outrage. We need to promote alternatives, sites that prioritise accurate information above invented or exaggerated nonsense. That implies a system of checking; a “public journalism editorial policy” if you will.
Wikipedia looks like the best model I’ve seen so far; editing is open to the public, and as a bonus it already ranks highly in Google search results. However, its policy causes it to be overly influenced by the established news media. But any public news project will suffer from another problem of Wikipedia, which is that vested interests can deploy editors to influence it; cf: Oliver Kamm / Philip Cross.
Suggestions requested. C’mon, folks! We need to do better than just hollering “censorship”!
And I can understand others feeling I’ve not showed an appropriate degree of alarm, but I’ve been expecting something like this for a long time. Long since, I have had my favourite sites bookmarked, and set my browser history not to expire. But when I watch other people browse they generally seem to use Google to find everything including their own e-mail provider! They tell me of a site and I say “what’s the URL” and they don’t even know what I’m talking about; “it’s on Google” they say.
The more we rely upon the big corporations, the more dependent we become; that’s inevitable, and we only have ourselves to blame. We need to learn fast, and we need to teach what we know.
I’ve noticed this too, Clark. People want the BBC news, so they do a search on “bbc news”. I’ve even seen searches on “www.bbc.co.uk” among the more sophisticated users. Pointing out that this is the address itself they’re asking for, and it’s like calling directory inquiries and asking for the number 0207-456-7890.
I don’t use a smart-phone myself, but have noticed some have nothing _but_ google – and no way to change that as the default search engine. Other than type ixquick.com in the address field and go from there, which almost nobody will bother to do.
Talking about the discussions, I would like to know why the mass shootings always bring out the False-Flaggers as surely as night follows day, but when it’s a comparatively minor affair killing only numbers in single digits, a collective “meh” is all you’ll hear.
Why is that? Would the murder of several people not warrant attention, despite it happening several times a day in the US? Do government plots only involve scores of people?
On the subject, what’s this excitement about mass shooting survivors who happen to die in the weeks and months following the event. Do the false-flaggers actually believe this is some mopping up operation – that they were specifically targeted, and what the (supposed) shooter didn’t manage to kill, will have to be seen off individually after the event?
In a word, sensationalism.
% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.
https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/unix.errors.html
% rm congressional-ethics
rm: congressional-ethics nonexistent
Macky and I had long written battles with the supporters of the official view over Ukraine. Some of the supporters of the official view were the same supporters of the official view over 9/11. When MSM shut up comment on Ukraine they, to their everlasting shame, did the same. When the truth comes out about 9/11 they will shut up shop again.
http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/the-hidden-truth-about-ukraine-kiev-euromaidan-snipers-kill-demonstrators-italian-doc-bombshell-evidence/
It would seem there is more press freedom in Italy these days.
@John, indeed; as a reminder of that time, when we will being called Russian agents & shills in almost every reply we received, here’s this very good piece dealing with exactly that, and offering much needed advise for those that need it, on how to engage in online debates;
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/accusing-someone-you-disagree-with-of-being-a-russian-troll-is-admitting-you-have-no-argument-1c6f61782c2b
Sadly Macky it par for the course. As Caitlin Johnstone says:
“I fight what I consider to be establishment propaganda for a living, but if all I ever did was type “that’s propaganda!” over and over again, nobody would ever read my articles. I have to make a compelling case for what actual disinformation is being presented and present clear arguments for why I think they are wrong. The same is true for everyone, even if they believe their position is supported by 17 intelligence agencies and the infinite wisdom of the Palmer Report.”
I’ve been called everything from a Stalinist through Trotskyist to a liar without there ever having been justification. But the people, like the famous Louise Mensch, who resort to these tactics are the ones who in their hearts no they have no arguments. It never stops them waffling. They obviously think that waffle is argument or we would not get so much of it. 🙂
On a point of note when you get into Caitlin Johnstone’s blog if you got directly from the link here you cannot get out back to Craig’s. I suspect this is Google’s way of saying we have no argument against this woman so we must make it difficult for anyone accessing her blog. Next time I will try posting the URL into a new tab.
“know” not “no”
– “when you get into Caitlin Johnstone’s blog if you got directly from the link here you cannot get out back to Craig’s. I suspect this is Google’s way of saying…”
Sorry, how is Google involved with this? How did you try to get back to Craig’s?
“On a point of note when you get into Caitlin Johnstone’s blog if you got directly from the link here you cannot get out back to Craig’s. I suspect this is Google’s way of saying we have no argument against this woman so we must make it difficult for anyone accessing her blog. Next time I will try posting the URL into a new tab.”
I made a mistake here thinking her blog was powered by Blogger when in fact it is Medium. The other thing is it no longer freezes when I try to use the back arrows. I thought I’d better check what Clark wants to try and point score on here and I’m glad I did because I discovered this intriguing article. I hope this technology does become available if only for the sake of the planet but can also understand why greedy money-mad businessmen would do anything to keep us locked-in on filthy oil.
https://medium.com/@zaron3/nikola-tesla-and-the-conspiracy-against-water-powered-cars-a1e0216c8a23
Zaron Burnett III’s article on medium.com displays gross scientific illiteracy.
“Warafin” is in fact called Warfarin. H2 which can be burnt in engines is not ionised hydrogen gas. “Ortho hydroxy” probably is meant to be oxy-hydrogen. Ortho-hydroxy is not a molecule. Oxy-hydrogen is not a molecule either; it’s a mixture of gases. Deuterium and tritium cannot be made by electrolysis. “Fire isn’t supposed to turn into water” – sentences like this are simply hilarious; when any hydrocarbon is burned in air, the major reaction product is water vapour. From there on it just gets more laughable. Zaron Burnett III may be a “roving correspondent for Playboy”, but he certainly knows no science. But he doesn’t know what he’s writing about either:
– “In the water-powered car community online, you’ll read bitter claims that amateur inventors can never get their designs and inventions patented because that’s another way the US government denies the alternative energy theories and heretical science”
But the man the article is about, Stanley Meyer, patented all his ideas – and patents have to be published, so there was never any secrecy about them. Those patents have since expired, so no one would even need to pay for a license to sell devices based upon the formerly patented principles.
Water is not a source of chemical energy, and the authorities watch for “water powered” claims because they are typically promoted for the purpose of scamming investors.
I don’t blame Clark for not understanding the article or the potential for cleaner transport systems. And of course he knows better than anyone else on this and all other subjects.
http://www.hybridcars.com/nanoflowcell-ag-planning-1075-hp-electric-supercar-production-new-swiss-facility/
Not understanding ortho-hydroxy torches he made something up to fit his own scientific beliefs saying: “Ortho hydroxy” probably is meant to be oxy-hydrogen. Ortho-hydroxy is not a molecule. Oxy-hydrogen is not a molecule either; it’s a mixture of gases. Deuterium and tritium cannot be made by electrolysis.” What is wrong with everybody that they cannot see Clark’s visionary physics?
The writer made a mistake, unlike Clark, and probably misheard what he was told. It was most likely Auto-Hydroxy burner (HHO burner). Clark, who professes to be interested in cleaner energy does nothing but try to disprove what may be emerging scientific progress in that direction. He is a vehement in this as he is in his opposition to alternative theories (engineering theories) as to why the twin towers and Building 7 collapsed.
He wastes everybody’s precious time.
http://auto-hydrogen.com/what-is-hho/what-is-hho
and:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaO6xWTkL2Q
John, the article is “sciency”, but it is not science.
Science goes like this: Either an electrolytic cell produces gas which carries more energy than the electricity used to produce it, or it doesn’t. The calculations are quite straightforward; one coulomb of charge will displace one mole of electrons, liberating gases proportionally according to the chemical formula. Either you or I could perform this experiment at home. If there is some “emerging scientific progress” it is perfectly simple for us to check.
There should be no mystery about this. If we are reduced to taking the inventor’s word, it can only be because the inventor is keeping something from us, in which case it is not science. It is only science if the results are reproducible.
Now. Do you believe the whole of electronics and electrochemistry to be an elaborate scam, as asserted in the article?
Oh, and “Auto Hydrogen” (not “auto-hydroxy” which isn’t mentioned anywhere) is the name of a company selling electrolytic HHO kits to be added to cars; neither term is the name of a substance. In reference to John’s November 29, 19:54 comment, there seem to be no such things as “ortho-hydroxy torches”. Of course, I’ve heard of oxy-acetylene torches, but you can’t just go changing one technical-looking term for another.
Again; do you believe the whole of electronics and electrochemistry to be an elaborate scam, as asserted in the article you linked to?
‘IS terrorists filmed retreating from Albukamal towards US-backed SDF lines’:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/terrorists-filmed-retreating-albukamal-towards-us-backed-sdf-lines/
Though there hasn’t been any further confirmation, it makes perfect sense. But not to the likes of Monbiot, the MSM and our ‘Left’ politicians and organisations like StW.
And there was a comment above about not many Syrians being in US and it’s cronies’ controlled areas in Syria; well, here’s 50,000, that the US will not allow any agencies to assist with humanitarian intervention like food supplies, and which apparently they won’t assist either:
‘Over 50,000 people isolated as US closes area around its base in Syria – Russian MoD’:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/50000-people-isolated-us-closes-area-around-base-syria-russian-mod/
So it starts,using the issue of suicide prevention, but we all know that is just the start, next it will be tweaked for the prevention of “offensive opinions” & then “fake news”, etc, etc
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/27/facebook-ai-suicide-prevention/
I can see those extended to early detection of radicalisation then early detection of socialism and then early detection of tendency not to agree with the consensus and finally early detection of wanting to vote for the wrong party. Big brother knows what is best for you even before you do.
@ SA November 28, 2017 at 15:57
And inclusion in the Gulag, ‘Re-education Center’ or ‘The Chop’ list.
But I suspect that those lists are already heavily populated with ‘Truthers’.
The biggest story for me currently to follow is Saudi Arabia. One of the big suppressed stories during the US elections was the large Saudi donations to the Clinton foundation. We are also very aware of how our own Tory government is beholden to the Saudi’s and will not have them criticised or exposed because they are such good customers.
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/04/tory-uk-saudi-arabia-gifts-money/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39485083
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/saudi-arabia-arms-sales-yemen-war-uk-government-us-donald-trump-obama-aid-a7643066.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39485083
The total strangulation of Yemen by Saudi Arabia receives much less coverage and opprobrium than other lesser disasters, and there is a lot of evidence of our government’s help with that.
We in this blog are all aware of the Saudi interference both in Iraq and Syria and also the recent political attempts at destabilisation of Qatar and Lebanon by the Saudis. More recently there is also mounting evidence of increasing collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That plus the past and the collusion in some ways in 911 makes us start joining rather vague (or maybe not so vague) dots.
I do beg indulgence for this rather incoherent post, I am sure there are those amongst you who could develop this better but I think we should all be watching MBS and Saudi Arabia more carefully.
Meant also to include these:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/friedmans-love-letter-to-a-war-criminal/
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/11/and-then-the-clown-prince-told-friedman-suck-on-this.html
Tom Friedman’s NYT article didn’t even go down well with his own regular readers, people are seeing through the BS more & more;
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/28/tom-friedmans-paean-to-a-saudi-tyrant-ignites-nyt-comments-storm/
Here’s an interesting piece in more ways than one; it’s about the forcing of RT in the US to register as a Foreign Agent, and the author makes one point, that as an investigative journalist, sometimes it’s impossible to get his stories out in the MSM, and he gives as examples the following;
“based upon documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — showing that the Houston FBI office learned or knew of a well-developed plot to conduct “intelligence” on the Houston Occupy movement, identify the leaders, and then “if deemed necessary” to assassinate them using “suppressed” sniper rifle fire, or the story I broke based upon information obtained from a county coroner suggesting that a potential key witness in the case of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was actually murdered by an FBI agent in Orlando”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/28/suddenly-im-a-russian-agent-2/
Now these are important & interesting in their own right, and probably would have been dismissed as “Conspiracy Theories” if it had not been for being able to get the story out, and to cite his evidence on RT. It also highlights the real problem that RT poses, which is exactly the same problem that WikiLeakes poses for the Elites, and that is the undermining of them being able to control the narratives, and that is exactly why both have come under ferocious attacks; RT is not being attacked because of alleged “Fake News”, or because Russia is allegedly “interfering” in the US Election, it is being attacked for letting us know real news that the Elites would rather not have us know, normally because it exposes their criminality & lying propaganda.
I could not agree more Macky. Sadly it will get worse. And of course there are people who still believe MSM gives them the real news and people like you and me are, you’ve guessed it, conspiracy theorists. Google has got so bad from my point of view that when I do a search it comes up on the first page with articles years old and nothing properly connected with the information I require or requested (usually alternative to MSM). It gives plenty of links to MSM shit. I use Yandex but Yandex uses the Google search engine. Only when searching in Russian do I get more accurate and connected links. The same goes for Wikipedia.
Not everybody knows but I’m writing a novel about Russian emigre poet Georgy Vladomirovich Ivanov. WIkipedia, the English version, gives the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Ivanov
This says the poet’s father was a banker. The Russian version is better,
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
It states correctly that his father was a retired lieutenant colonel. I realise that these articles are only as good as the contributors but even if I had the time I would not know where to start with the speculative English Wikipedia biography which also suggests that Ivanov had a drink problem. He certainly had a smoking problem. But his wife said the rumours of him being an alcoholic were grossly exaggerated and started by one person.
JG: “And of course there are people who still believe MSM gives them the real news and people like you and me are, you’ve guessed it, conspiracy theorists.”
There are some people who see everything purely in terms of black and white too. Such people consider those not swallowing _every_ conspiracy theory going, even the entirely contradictory ones, as “sheeple” and characterise them as accepting every official proclamation at face value. They also consider questioning any conspiracy theory as a personal insult.
glenn_nl
The whole term “conspiracy theory” is designed to denigrate like “reds under the beds” or “commies” or “Russia’s to blame”. “Sheeple” is the same and when I’ve used it I hope it has been within the context of some enlightening comment missed by MSM. It is not about swallowing a conspiracy theory, for which I much prefer the term “inquiry” and adherents to it “inquirers”, but about looking at it. With this 9/11 thread inquirers are trying to get to the truth, which is not what the governments or MSM would have us believe. That’s for sure. The science, as many of us here have tried to point out ad nauseum, does not stack up.
– ” The science, as many of us here have tried to point out ad nauseum, does not stack up”
I know what you’re hinting at Mr Goss, and your statement is essentially false. If you have a scientific argument, please don’t state it, because if it is false I will be obliged in the name of science and engineering to expose its falsity, but Macky keeps accusing me of raising the subject you are hinting about.
John, OK, you don’t like the term “conspiracy theory”, so how should one refer to the class of bunk arguments of which so many are presented on this thread? For instance, that a group of European performance artists must have wired explosives in the Twin Towers because one of them had the surname “urban” and had been to an Israeli’s party, and they built a den from a load of cardboard boxes that had contained electrical distribution components? Or that inconsistency of hue inherent to the NTSC television system indicates that TV coverage of the attacks on the WTC was faked? These are called “conspiracy theories” in common parlance; how do you think they should be referred to instead?
It is not a matter of disliking the term “conspiracy theory”. It’s just that this term has successfully been loaded with negative connotations i.e. basically it has been linked with stupidity, gullibilty, madness etc. It’s as if there had been a campaign within the sciences to smear biological theories and everyone would say, “Oh we’re not going near that – it’s one of those ridiculous biological theories”.
Well on this thread I’ve recently been calling them “unwarranted theories”, due to the huge amount of personal offence people seem to make a point of expressing whenever the term is used. Whatever you call them, they make up the majority of arguments posted here, most of which are unadulterated bullshit.
– “…stupidity, gullibilty, madness etc”
Well quite; most of the things offered as “truth” on this thread would require some of those in their believers. If stupid, mad or gullible people believe propositions A, B, C, D and E, but proposition C happens to be true, it does not make the believers less gullible, nor does it make A, B, D and E any truer.
George – exactly that happens in reverse right here. Anyone not enthusiastically endorsing every conspiracy going is called “sheeple” or otherwise gullible individuals who believe everything they see in a newspaper or the government says.
Now by every conspiracy, I mean such as the Las Vagas shooting was a “False Flag” – actors, etc., AND AT THE SAME TIME that there were multiple shooters, in an attempt perhaps to lower the population levels a bit. Also, survivors are being systematically bumped off because the powers-that-be wanted them dead in the first place.
How can these contradictory theories all be true? Yet you never hear the conspiracy buffs doubt any of them. They are ALL true. And you’re “sheeple” if you say otherwise.
What I object to is the assumption that the label “conspiracy theory” in itself is self-refuting. But then again it is always used selectively. Whether 9/11 is an “inside” or “outside” job, there has to be SOME conspiracy behind it. The only alternative is that it was produced by a series of totally random accidental events that had nothing to do with each other which would be the maddest and most stupid thing of all. Now bearing in mind that it had to be some conspiracy then every theory about it is a conspiracy theory. But the notion of an external attack is not described as such a theory. That would give the game away i.e. it would “detoxify” the very expression we are arguing about.
If we stop calling it a conspiracy theory, will that stop all the covert war initiation? Or is it just so we don’t hurt people’s feelings too much?
George, I think “conspiracy theory” is a pretty good term for various reasons.
Firstly, these theories do tend to hugely increase the necessary extent of conspiracy. For instance, Twin Tower demolition theory not only needs the secret demolition riggers, it needs NIST and FEMA, and nearly all the world’s physicists and engineers, and all the universities and national science societies.
Secondly, such theories invoke further action of the conspiracy, usually as their first choice, whenever challenged, eg. when contradictory evidence is found, it is explained as having been fabricated by the conspiracy.
Thirdly, challengers on threads like this one are frequently dismissed as working for the conspiracy too.
I think you should learn to live with the term. It cuts both ways. Craig used it very appropriately against Resident Dissident, who promptly changed the subject like conspiracy theorists usually do:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/10/twas-good-ship-venus/comment-page-1/#comment-704603
The assumed secret conspiracy effectively becomes an infinite reservoir of convenient explanation. Consequently, any theory can be propped up this way, against any contradictory evidence or reasoning.
The assumed conspiracy effectively takes the place of “God”; compare with the creationists answer to dinosaur fossils – “God put them there” (or alternatively, permitted the Devil to do so) “in order to test our faith”. And like “God”, the conspiracy is considered all-seeing and all-powerful; it can control all the worlds engineers and physicists, including unemployed and retired ones (Twin Tower demolition theory) or all the biologists and palaeontologists (creationism), or all the naturalists and climatologists (global warming denial), or all the pilots and atmospheric scientists (chemtrails), or the entire medical and medical science communities (anti-vaccination).
Is someone going to remind me of the Manhattan Project now? How long did that remain secret? Hiroshima was a bit of a give-away that someone had been doing some R&D.
Try DuckDuckGo as your search engine if you want to break out of Google giving you what it thinks you want. I alternate between the two. Sometimes I’m relieved that Google, knowing my interests (dark chord on soundtrack) can second guess my poorly expressed wishes, but sometimes I want to look more widely.
There is also Startpage / Ixquick:
https://www.startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
Or you can try the GoogleSharing Firefox add-on:
– “GoogleSharing is a system that mixes the requests of many different users together, such that Google is not capable of telling what is coming from whom”
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googlesharing/
But whatever you do, learn! It is pointless merely bleating about these megacorps, as if doing so will make them serve us instead of Mammon. We need to take action, by which I mean appropriate, effective, collective, organised action, and for that we need to learn.
– “It also highlights the real problem that RT poses, which is exactly the same problem that WikiLeakes poses for the Elites, and that is the undermining of them being able to control the narratives”
But surely RT is ultimately controlled by Russian elites?
The Independent and, I believe, the Express are owned by an elite Russian oligarch.
It is erroneous to give the impression that “the Elites” are purely “Western”. The criminal Alisher Usmanov, bless him, was the richest man in Britain for a while.
Clark, have you noticed that while everyone is scurrying around worrying about the “deep state” and formulating all manner of theories about what they’re up to, the real power is right there in the open. Owning coal and gold mines, owning vast amounts of our infrastructure. Making vast profits through the banking system, owning newspapers and politicians to promote their interests.
It’s all there – right in our faces. Yet the energy of the opposition is sapped with discussions about whether this or that disaster/ terrorism/ gun-nut was really some operation by our government to deceive us for various reasons.
If these huge conspiracy theorists weren’t there, the oligarchs would probably want to invent them, just to take the heat off.
“I tell people you can call me a conspiracy theorist if you call everybody else a coincidence theorist”: :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-YgjmWMJB0
‘Blatant And Inarguable Geoengineering Jet Spraying Captured On Film’:
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/blatant-and-inarguable-geoengineering-jet-spraying-captured-on-film/
‘The past propensity of populations to deny the ongoing climate engineering atrocities is finally breaking down. Increasingly shocking and compelling film footage captures of jet aircraft aerosol dispersions are rapidly eroding the official false narrative that we are only seeing “condensation trails” in our skies.’
(See very illuminating 1 minute video)
Paul, I can’t accept this visual evidence. Here’s a quote from one of my favourite books, “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” (2006). You have only to read this book to know that the author is very knowledeable and a fanatic about clouds. He would rather eat his own liver than spread disinformation about them on behalf of the CIA or anyone else. This is from the chapter entitled “Contrails”.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cloudspotters-Guide-Gavin-Pretor-Pinney/dp/034089590X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512053971&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Cloudspotter%27s+Guide#reader_034089590X
@ Node November 30, 2017 at 15:50
The ‘trails’ stop and start 6 times in 40 seconds!
At 600 MPH, that means they would have started and stopped 6 times in about 6.6 miles travel.
High-bypass Turbofan Jet Engines only emit ‘condensation trails under extreme circumstances :
‘High Bypass Turbofan Jet Engines, Geoengineering, And The Contrail Lie’:
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/the-contrail-lie/
(contains 7 minute video – but check out some of the other articles and videos on the site).
Then there is this:
‘Geoengineering Whistleblower ~ Ex-Military ~ Kristen Meghan, Hauppauge, NY, January 18th, 2014’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHm0XhtDyZA
Would you assess Kristen Meghan of being a bald-faced liar? There is no room for misinterpretation here – she is either telling the truth, or not.
The ‘trails’ stop and start 6 times in 40 seconds!
… which is consistent with the plane flying through an undulating interface between two atmospheric layers. We know the atmosphere is layered, different layers have different temperatures and humidities. The interface between layers isn’t a straight line, nothing in nature is. If your figures are correct it could be a wavy interface with a wavelength of 1 mile.
Look at herring-bone patterned skies for a common example of this phenomenon.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=herringbone+cloud+formation&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF1ofrtOfXAhWjJsAKHXAjDokQ7AkINg&biw=1600&bih=750
Would you assess Kristen Meghan of being a bald-faced liar?
I’ve made no comment about her or chemtrails in general. I don’t know about either. I DO know that the 1 minute video I was responding to is NOT “Blatant And Inarguable” PROOF of geoengineering, because I have suggested another plausible explanation. I don’t know if it’s the correct explanation, just that it’s possible, therefore the video proves nothing.
Paul, I have started watching the video of Kristen Meghan’s lecture. If I had a thousand pounds, I would bet it that the compilation of video clips between 01:32 and 06:38 was NOT the clip shown to the audience by Kristen Meghan. Rather, it was compiled by one of the climate change denial outfits, and edited in to replace the clip that Kristen Meghan actually showed, in order to deceive YouTube viewers. If you want to check, you could try to contact Kristen Meghan and ask her about the video at the link you posted.
I have watched the whole video now. My assessment is that her first-hand information is probably correct, but her interpretation of it is exaggerated, conditioned by her exposure to the Truther community.
Starting at 18:20 she gives some very important advice. “These people are paid […] to get you on board to believe a website or an article, just so that you look so vulnerable, and then later it will be deemed non-credible and then you look non-credible. So please vet, research…”
But to research effectively, you need to learn how, and that requires understanding and accepting the imperfections of the human thought process, and the methods that have been developed to overcome those problems.
The sad thing is that aircraft do disperse aerosols and pollutants which affect the climate, and it isn’t secret at all. Just because of the well understood principle they work on, aircraft release water vapour and sulphates which act to reduce global temperature in the short term, and carbon dioxide which acts to increase it in the long term and to neutralise the alkalinity of the oceans. There isn’t some easy fix to stop air transport damaging the environment.
It is interesting that the word conspiracy has been used and misused so often. We do know that a group of people have conspired to hijack four planes in one day to perform a spectacular event. The timings were according to official data 8:45, 9:02, 9:45 and 10:10.
That there was a conspiracy to destroy and kill is not questioned by anybody, but what is questioned is the theory behind who did this and why.
But returning to what we know rather than what we are told we we are told:
1. There was a lack of effective, coordinated response from the USAF to the hijackings in a highly militarised and sensitive area.
2. There is a lot of documentation about preparations and warnings of such events.
3, There was a lack of direct indictment of UBL by the FBI for culpability in 911.
4. Events that have never happened before or since, happened that day, These are the three steel framed buildings fell, two due to being hit by planes, and one that was not hit by planes. Moreover, ” Black boxes stored in the tail of Flight 77 were reported as having been discovered in the Pentagon on September 12 2001. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld later said that data from the cockpit voice recorder was unrecoverable. This is thought to be the first time in 40 years that a cockpit voice tape, once found, has yielded no data.”
5 ” When the 9/11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta, checked in at Logan airport, in Boston, his name triggered an alert on the airport’s security system and his bags were never put in the plane’s hold.”
What does one make out of all this? Conspiracy to stand down or incompetence? Even without having to make up theories, the events have not been adequately explained.
@ SA November 30, 2017 at 19:41
Why did some of the ‘alleged’ hijackers behave in such a fashion it would be almost a slam dunk they would be arrested, so unable to fulfil their ‘mission’ (by threatening to cut a woman’s throat, who refused to give one a loan to hire a chemical spraying plane, and others of snorting cocaine and getting riotously drunk, refusing to pay a bill, then one saying ‘I can pay my bills – I’m an airline pilot’?
(see my link to to video ‘Zero’ above).
Why were there NO videos or still of ANY of them going through check-in or boarding the aircraft ‘allegedly’ used in the attacks?
(There was one picture of a few getting on a connecting flight, without proper date stamps, if I remember correctly).
How did a passport get out of one of the ‘alleged’ Twin Tower attack planes, and be found in the dust, undamaged?
There are so many gaping holes in the ‘Official Narrative’, Swiss cheese makers have initiated a copyright suit against the USG (or if they haven’t, they should do!
Its the audaciousness of the Big Lie and the assertion that black is white and dare you to say otherwise. But the situation is becoming akin to the great divide between the people and state of old Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc which is why when the death grip was loosened the whole edifice fell down, but that conspiracy against humanity still does not get the vilification and hyperbole in Zionist neo-con MSM over a mild criticism of Israel.
Paul
Even the events post 911 are difficult to explain. Having experienced 911 why has the United States supported rebel movements in Syria that have strong links and work closely with Al Qaeda in Syria? I am not even mentioning the widely believed idea that IS was a CIA creation armed and supplied by Saudis and helped by Turkey. I am talking about what is openly acknowledged. Isis seems to have suddenly grown from nowhere with complete state paraphernalia, weapon factories and money system. The indulged for a while in lucrative trade in oil with Turkey until the Russians put a stop to it.
What I am trying to say is that we have enough from the official narrative to be sure of the conspiracy and yet nothing seems to have happened.
SA: “we have enough from the official narrative to be sure of the conspiracy and yet nothing seems to have happened”
That’s because of the power that these very same official narratives have to shut-down, marginalize & ridicule, thanks to the corporate MSM, who define for us a societal consensus; here’s two more pieces from Caitlin Johnstone on this very point:
“The real currency of the world is not gold, nor plutocratic fiats, nor even the material backing of military might — it’s narrative. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. That’s why propaganda plays such a massive role in our society. Whoever can control the stories about where power is located and how money works controls the power and money, because those things only operate by societal consensus. Power and money only exist where they exist because people agree to pretend that’s where they exist. They only exist to the extent that their stories are believed.”
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-to-keep-your-head-in-a-sea-of-propaganda-6d7c6c4f4c48
“It is at its core a betrayal of humanity for you to abdicate your authority over your own worldview to anyone, be it Noam Chomsky or Ron Paul or me. Nobody belongs in that throne but you. Trusting in any authority but your own is shirking your most important existential responsibility. As far as you are concerned, figuring out what’s true is your job and no one else’s.”
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/it-is-your-human-duty-to-stand-unapologetically-in-your-own-authority-c386a5fe9606
I fully agree with this. I strongly believe that one can prove nothing by continuing to debate the MSM. Here we are preaching to the different degrees of the converted. The system has to be changed. I love the way that Corbyn said to JP Morgan ‘Yes, we are a danger to you’.
Despite what goes on in this blog we have to start understanding the different ways we believe in all these events and stop calling each other names. I think Clark has some good ideas. I think we should be better at organising and not falling for the helplessness we are in. We should learn to use alternative OS systems, we should use different search engines. It is almost now the belief that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, EBay, Facebook and twitter are monopolies that cannot be resisted but we must seek alternatives. We cannot bemoan the loss of local stores when we continue to shop at our local supermarkets. We should look at clean energy providers and switch to them. Until there is a substantial change we must continue to use the current methods which is in this case, practicing what we preach.
Sorry for the sermon.
– “As far as you are concerned, figuring out what’s true is your job and no one else’s.”
She is right that each individual must exercise personal responsibility. However, figuring out the overall picture has to be a collective enterprise. Obviously, each individual can encounter only a tiny fraction of the totality of global information, but also reality is hugely more complex than any individual can even assess, let alone understand. A collaborative approach is essential, involving cross-checking, verification, and logical analysis.
SA, 10:49:
– “I love the way that Corbyn said to JP Morgan ‘Yes, we are a danger to you’”
I think you mean “in answer to a Morgan Stanley analyst”. J P Morgan died in 1913.
Please pardon my pedantry, but the devil really is in the detail. I’m almost paranoid about small discrepancies escalating out of all proportion and discrediting us, because I see it happen so much. It is one of those failings of human thought and communication that we all suffer from and must be wary of, a tendency that is exploited ruthlessly by advertisers, cult leaders and the tabloid “news” media, but also at the heart of my complaints about the conduct of debate on threads such as this one.
JP Morgan is the name of a firm separate from Morgan Stanley.
Lysias, I think you mean J P Morgan & Co., subsidiary of J P Morgan Chase & Co..
But Corbyn’s statement was in answer to a Morgan Stanley analyst.
SA: ” we should use different search engines. It is almost now the belief that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, EBay, Facebook and twitter are monopolies that cannot be resisted but we must seek alternatives”
Problem is two-fold;
1) Alternatives, such as alternatives search-engines are no good if the alternative News sources/blogs etc are being proscribed, denied mass-visitors due to de-ranking algorithms, and are branded as “Fake News”, “Propaganda”, or in the case of WikiLeaks, as traitorous fools for foreign enemies, as they are denied “credibility” in the realm where it matters, open Public Discourse.
2) Resistance to the rapidly increasing Internet clampdown is being undermine even by some of the Left, who not only do not oppose it, witness the lack of outcry over RT being forced to register as a Foreign Agent (an ominous precedent that will surely be expanded on), but actually cheer-on & support it ! They really are the useful idiots, cutting off their noses to spite their faces, all because they’re still upset over Hillary losing, and/or hate Trump, or even because they can’t stand “Conspiracy Theories”, etc, etc.
Very interesting by Paul Craig Roberts
https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-washington-corrupt-government-history/
Macky
I understand all that and although I have bookmarked, Duck Duck Go, I rarely use it, we have just become accustomed to the ease with which Google presents itself. I also still occasionally use Amazon for expediency and so on. But at the end of the day, it is us who are paying for the rich billionaires to get richer and gain more control by using thier products.
SA: “for expediency and so on”
Well in a way that’s exactly the underlying fundamental problem, expediency; it’s expedient to believe that 911 could not be an inside job, it’s expedient to believe that Blair did not deliberately lie his way into attacking Iraq, that David Kelly committed suicide, etc, etc Far easier just to trust the official narratives, it feels safer, and makes life easier not to bother with such things, so most people keep their heads down & get on with their lives; others, who have too much invested in the status quo, either materially, ideologically or psychologically, cannot stand to see others question Authority, so they attempt to defend the TPTB by shouting-down any dissenters.
People don’t become dissenters by choice, normally it through outrage against Injustice, and/or being true to their own intellectually honesty, in that if what is being reported as correct, seems untrue/unlikely, then your own self-respect demands that you query it.
Macky
The fact that Tony Blair deceived parliament and lied and continues to make money of what he did is acknowledged by most people I think. What is lacking is the mechanism by which he can be brought to justice.
The same applies to many other events. Even if we are to believe the official narrative in all details we are still left with either negligence or incompetence to account for what has happened ‘officially’. The fact that AQ has not only survived but prospered on Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan despite the great coalition against terror of tens of nations in the coalition of the willing and has also morphed into IS is another gross incompetence at face value. We all know that but we still lack the way to deal with it. That really is the current dilemma we have strong narrative creators and perpetuators and despite all the alternative media the narrative prevails. That is the dilemma. I would really not be surprised if all what the truthets allege is true but it still will do nothing to change the narrative and this is my dilemma.
Well said SA. If 9/11 was an inside job, it didn’t work. They went ahead with devastating Iraq in 2003, but that was the last one they did openly because of the huge international protests; they know that the illusion of democracy would be shattered if they continued on that path. So the attack on Libya was initiated by subterfuge. The overt attack on Syria was voted down in the House of Commons though the proxy attack continues, and the attack on Yemen is being pursued exclusively by Saudi Arabia, albeit with British weapons and “Western” support.
Sixteen years on, the “seven countries in five years” plan is obviously not running to schedule. WE keep throwing those spanners in their works, but by protesting in huge numbers and forcing matters like Fox-Werritty-Atlantic Bridge into the mainstream media via blogs like this, not by promoting weird speculations about 9/11.
In fact, both 9/11 and the torture programme had already failed by February 2003, or there wouldn’t have been tens of millions of people protesting against the attack on Iraq. The biggest protest ever seen.
SA: “That really is the current dilemma we have strong narrative creators and perpetuators and despite all the alternative media the narrative prevails”
Well yes, and it only going to much harder to challenge the official narrative if they succeed in policing the Internet as they plan to; they will co-opt the Internet exactly as they have done with the MSM; the alternative media has actually forced this internet clampdown, because it has really started to expose the sham of many of the official narratives, so it’s working, just not quite reached the critical mass of forcing the debate of these official narrative out in the open, which is what the Elites fear. So the important fight right now is to oppose this increasing Internet censorship, but as I’ve already stated, even people on the Left are not only not opposing this, but actually supporting it.
There is no practical way of censoring content on the Internet. The US government asked ARPA and the hackers at MIT to make it uncensorable, and they did. It’s highly ironic that the US government has been trying to censor the Internet ever since it became popular. Rather like TOR. The US government originally paid for TOR to be developed, and now they’re paying to try to defeat it :/
It’s hard to censor the Internet even to a geographical area. That’s what China tries to do, with the so-called Great Firewall of China; they attempt to filter content at the virtual borders. But it still gets breached. You can volunteer to provide a relay to help breach it; see the TOR site. But content within a firewalled area can’t be censored.
During the Arab Spring, we saw various countries shut down the Internet to disrupt organisation of protests. The same thing happened every time; the censoring country’s economy went into a nosedive and within a few days, the government ordered the ISPs to turn the Internet back on. It was really quite amusing, watching them all learn the same lesson the hard way. The Western countries would be far more vulnerable in this respect because their economies are so internationally interdependent.
Censorship isn’t quite the right word. There are two things that can be done.
The first is control of the “great Internet telephone directory”; DNS, the Domain Name System. This is the look-up infrastructure that converts, say, craigmurray.org.uk into the appropriate IP address. Sites’ domain names can be revoked, removing them from the system. But you could still access a blacklisted site by typing its IP address directly into your browser’s address bar.
Ultimately, controlling the DNS system would prove self-defeating. Although the master DNS servers are in the USA, there is nothing to stop other countries setting up their own. Word that the great bastion of free speech was involved in censorship would get around, other countries would set up top-level DNS servers, and people would learn to change the DNS settings of their Internet connections, just to see what was being censored. Getting censored would become a mark of authenticity.
The other approach is to pressure companies offering “search engines”; primarily Google, obviously. (I’ve scare-quoted “search engines” because that service is just the bait – these are really data mining operations.) But Google was anyway almost useless for finding
alternative analysis. Let’s face it, we use the comment sections of blogs like this one to find good, alternative news sources, because they’ve been filtered by human intelligence rather than an algorithm designed to give us more of what we seemed to like on previous searches.
What Google will actually do is prioritise the major news media outlets rather than downgrading the alternatives, because there are far less of the former and they’re much more stable. Trying to downgrade all the tiny and continually changing independent sites would be a never ending nightmare.
This is why I don’t care as much as some think I ought to; you need some understanding of the system as it stands before you can understand what changes are likely to be made to it. And Google searches found me far more wild goose chases than really interesting analysis anyway. Google searches were too populist, by design, for commercial reasons. Why should I care if Google changes its search results from one type of crapness to another?
Specifically in answer to some of Macky’s points (December 1, 20:41):
– “they will co-opt the Internet exactly as they have done with the MSM”
They can’t do it the same way because the two have different structures. For instance, stooges can be infiltrated into the Guardian to appear alongside other commentators, but that can’t be done to a blog such as this one, since there is only one primary author. Editors of established media outlets can be pressured or even replaced by media owners; again, a blog like this is not susceptible.
– “the alternative media has actually forced this internet clampdown, because it has really started to expose the sham of many of the official narratives”
I doubt that’s the reason because it would have happened sooner; for instance, Consortium News was set up in 1995, and this site has been going for over a decade. I think Trump getting into power partly assisted by provably fake news was the tipping point, following on from the growing trend of fanatical “conspiracy theorists” harassing members of the public, mostly through social media but sometimes even in person. This was leading to expensive police investigation followed by expensive court cases, with the state obliged both to prosecute, and to provide legal representation to the defendants.
– “…which is what the Elites fear”
Well, I ver much doubt that the elites are afraid of Twin Tower demolition theory, no-planers, and Sandy Hookers. “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about answers”.
– “So the important fight right now is to oppose this increasing Internet censorship”
It’s not censorship. It’s just a change from one set of crap search results to another, and some YouTubers losing the revenue from their click-bait. The larger threat is against net neutrality, but sites like this which are mostly text are pretty low bandwidth anyway.
The important fight hasn’t changed. Use the blogsphere, Wikipedia etc. to force marginalised but well evidenced stories into the popular consciousness. It never did work by hundreds of thousands finding blogs like this through Google. It worked because blog readers wrote to their MPs, and commented under stories in, for instance, the Guardian, linking back to here, thus showing up the papers’ omissions.
Paul, “I haven’t checked this one out, but…” …but you should have read the rest of the article you linked:
– “Middle Eastern publications have been circulating a rumor that Snowden’s NSA leak reveals “Operation Hornet’s Nest,” an American, British and Israeli plot to create the Islamic State to destabilize the Middle East.
– This isn’t the first time Iranian publications have mischaracterized the Islamic State as an American creation, but it is the first time Snowden’s name has been attached. Sources with access to Snowden’s documents have directly refuted the hoax. The Islamic State started as an al-Qaida offshoot, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise.
– We rate this claim Pants on Fire!”
Paul and Clark
First apologies for my sloppy writing above on JP Morgan, rather than Morgan Stanley.
Now it is exactly link above by Paul , this as an example of why we do not even need to embellish further, because we got caught out as Paul did just now. The Craig-Roberts article linked by me above shows how many times the ‘official’ narrative has changed with regards to the UBL assassination story. I remember when this story broke out I got into deep trouble with my work colleagues who are all educated professionals when I said that it was a pity he was killed rather than tried publicly. The answer was really venomous, how dare I question this about such a mass murderer, he deserved everything he got. There was total closure on any further reasoning, and these are professionals of supposedly high intelligence.
We have enough documents and admissions about AQ and ISIS in Syria, we have a very well documented public statement on how the US spent half a billion to train and equip the FSA only to manage to train 50 individuals, and thier public admission that the arms found thier way to AQ and IS. This is the main reason why I respect what Putin did in Syria which is not to argue the niceties in the UN, but to prove and then put an end to Turkish collusion and trade with IS. I also fully acknowledge that the Russians didn’t do it for altruistic reasons but for self interest and that it just coincided that thier self interest action was also right to put an end to this great lie. RT and Sputnik are good in uncovering and arguing some of the conspiracies in the West but are hopelessly full of propaganda and self interest too, but provide the needed balance.
@ Macky December 1, 2017 at 20:41
‘…even people on the Left are not only not opposing this, but actually supporting it.’
That’s the point – as many have realised, there is very little ‘Left’ left in the ‘Left’, it has been very largely co-opted. Added to which, there hasn’t really been a substantial ‘Left’ in the US since the McCarthy pogroms.
At least here in the UK we have a rebirth, due to Jeremy Corbyn.
He is a shining star, and as such is under tremendous attack, and the attacks will continue and doubtless increase in ferocity and venom as the next General Election approaches.
There is a pretty good ‘Left’ in the States – the ‘Black Left’ (I forget what their official name is) – but they are pucka ‘Left’, although not very numerous.
Here, we have umpteen ‘Communist’ spin-offs, most (if not all) so heavily infiltrated it ain’t funny.
This article by a French guy about the French ‘Left’ can be levelled at our ‘Left’ too:
‘SYRIA: French Academic Exposes Left-Wing Charlatans as Harbingers of Terrorism’:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/20/syria-french-academic-exposes-left-wing-charlatans-as-harbingers-of-terrorism/
But, again, JC has inspired the ‘Moderate Left’ here. Let’s support him, and remember, no one is perfect (as the MSM will doubtless ram down our throats – but not being ‘perfect’ is a tad off being Satan personified, which is how he will be increasingly portrayed); he will have to trim his sails – but so be it.
This post is a bit waffly, but the gist is hopefully apparent.
Corbyn is worth supporting. Are you in the Labour party Paul?
I joined to support Corbyn. I’ve been to two constituency party meetings. The first was when Corbyn was under attack from the Blairites. It was packed with newcomers. A motion from a local Blairite to tell Corbyn to submit to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) was forcefully voted down; you could feel the chill pass through the room. An alternative motion was proposed, telling the PLP to knuckle under and support their popularly elected leader’s new policies – the surge of optimism was palpable, and it was supported nearly unanimously. It was an electrifying atmosphere.
The second one I attended was two Saturdays ago, and the newcomers were mostly absent; just party long-timers who didn’t seem to have much clue why their party had suddenly gained so may votes at the general election.
Sorry posted this in the wrong place before.
Clark
Yes the millions marching about Iraq was very impressive but didn’t stop the invasion. The following invasions were cautious, Libya by obtaining a fig leaf UN resolution where China and Russia abstained and in Syria where proxies were used because of Russian objections. Now I tried to raise a petition called ‘Hands off Syria ‘ on 38 Degrees’s around the time of the vote and got a handful of people to sign. I tried to contact the anti war movement but saw very little sign of interest. There were no major demonstrations. In fact you could argue that the most important reason why Syria failed for the west is Russia not people’s action. And as to Yemen there is little public objections to our selling arms to the Saudis .
It really does seem to me that twitter and blogs have taken away from street protests. We can all write blogs from the comfort of our homes but is there still the appetite for mass demonstrations?
– “In fact you could argue that the most important reason why Syria failed for the west is Russia not people’s action.”
The UK government under Cameron proposed bombing Syria, and the motion was voted down. That is because many people such as myself wrote to our MPs, reminding them of the great demonstration in 2003, the Dodgy Dossier and the Downing Street Memo. It was one of the very few times I received a conciliatory replay from my MP.
Demonstrations do make a difference. They make it possible to say “look, we told you last time, you didn’t listen, and you were proven wrong”. That message needs to be spread because it does seem like a defeat, and enthusiasm for demonstration has been severely eroded.
The immediate effects of the politically motivated tweaking of the algorithm of the Google search engine;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP3yNCqXcAEKxf2.jpg:large
The Internet clampdown is trying to direct people away from commonsense exposures of official fake narratives, like “RussiaGate”;
“If Trump were colluding with Russia, he wouldn’t need Flynn to iron out a relationship with them. If Russia were colluding with Trump, they wouldn’t be rejecting his administration’s requests. If Trump were Putin’s puppet, Flynn wouldn’t have had to go begging them not to overreact to Obama’s sanctions after Russia’s puppet had already been elected. As always, the latest Russiagate scandal weakens the collusion narrative with Russia while highlighting other sleazy relationships with other countries that go ignored because they don’t fit the narrative.”
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/another-empty-bombshell-russiagate-story-d046d68fff9f
The list at
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP3yNCqXcAEKxf2.jpg:large
has a major statistical flaw; the sample of sites was selected. To get an overview of what has really happened, you need to pick a random sample of sites and see what has happened to all of them. For instance, how has traffic been affected to the extreme right-wing site Stormfront and similar? What about satirical sites like The Daily Mash?
We also need to know how this varies over time. As I mentioned earlier, many readers don’t have sites bookmarked, instead using a Google search to find even the sites they use repeatedly. For instance, have wsws.org lost mostly new readers, or regulars? If regulars, they will probably find the site again, and hopefully this time they will bookmark it. You might find some more in-depth articles linked from Richard Stallman’s News Notes; it’s the sort of thing he’s interested in:
http://stallman.org/archives/polnotes.html
The Russiagate hysteria is exactly what I mean by an unwarranted conspiracy theory. It became pretty obvious that Trump wasn’t in collusion with Russia when he had sixty Tomahawk cruise missiles fired at Syria, but this enormous red light has apparently gone unnoticed by those who want to believe.
A far more sensible matter for inspection would be convergence of interests among the global elite. Whatever Putin’s role, Russia is dominated by oligarchy, and Trump and co. will be well at home among such company. Low taxes on enormous wealth? Check! Utter contempt for honesty towards the wider population? Check! Exploiting nationalism? Check! This isn’t the Land of the Free versus the old Russian Bear; that’s just distracting, like Blairites versus Tories. It’s the hubris of the elite versus everyone else.
Of course, if I wanted to take a conspiracy theory angle, maybe Trump fired missiles at Syria just to make it look like he wasn’t in collusion with Russia. That’s the sort of reasoning by which unwarranted conspiracy theories elaborate. It’s not impossible, of course, and like most such theories we should bear it in mind, but always tagged that it was just a speculation, and therefore not a safe launchpad for further elaboration.
Clark
I agree with what you say but also I think that the accusations against Trump has also had the desired effect for the accusers of sometimes deliberate awkward decisions by the US administration against Russia.
Macky, what action do you propose we take about this “Internet censorship” or “Internet clampdown”?
Google are an interesting megacorp; though at its higher echelons Google has deep and historical ties to the US government surveillance sector, at the shop floor many of its employees – particularly its most productive ones – are young, idealistic hackers, many of them not at all naive, and they are the ones who will actually modify Google’s software. It’s going to be interesting to see how this develops over time.
Facebook are another major player in this. Facebook can be almost guaranteed to do something incompetent, which will then backfire quite spectacularly.
Escaping our attention so far have been Apple, Microsoft and Adobe.
The hostility to Trump in MSM is evidence he is upsetting someone, but Who?
Try looking at his policies and statements.
Except the statements he is condemned for in MSM are mild compared to the narrative promoted by MSM.
Examples?
Ah ha! Good point. He’s exposing the shared subconscious.
We are socialised by parents, school, media etc. to repress many of our natural tendencies such as aggression and selfishness, to limit aggressive and selfish actions. But the part of ourselves which would motivate such behaviour remains, and finds expression in other ways. When the media support war or injustice, these motivations within media workers are being expressed, but they are always rationalised in ways that provide justification – basically just convenient excuses. We all believe our own rationalisations.
Trump doesn’t bother with the rationalisations. Maybe his childhood socialisation was minimal, or maybe it wore off in the course of his privileged life. But whatever the reason, he now just shoots from the hip. He just grabs women by the arse or shoots missiles at Syria as the fancy takes him, but neither moderates such actions in the first place nor bothers to craft the excuses that would make his actions seem justified.
He’s an embarrassment because he exposes the carefully hidden side of human nature.
He is upsetting everybody and is an inconsistent loose cannon. There is nothing in his defence I am afraid.
It is so obvious that ISIS/IS was set up by the US and it’s cronies (as was ‘Al-CIA-dah’) that I put the ‘Politifact’ link in without checking it out. I was in a hurry, and though I did look for other sites which I had previously visited, the changed algorithms made it a thankless task.
Still, I appreciate I made a mistake.
Apart from creating them (which some of you seem to doubt), surely it is apparent that the US and it’s cronies are assisting them? Two British planes, and at least one US helicopter were shot down whilst delivering arms to IS in Iraq about two years ago (I can provide the links if needed). The ‘Coalition’ cronies (including the UK) attacked the Syrian Arab Army in Deir Ezzor (among other ‘accidents’):
‘US Coalition knew they were bombing the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor’:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-coalition-knew-bombing-syrian-army-deir-ezzor/
‘Who Makes Up the “Islamic Emirate”?: http://www.voltairenet.org/article185364.html
‘…At the time, Senator John McCain came to Syria illegally to meet the chiefs of staff of the FSA. According to the photograph then distributed to attest to the meeting, the staff included a certain Abu Youssef, officially sought by the US State Department under the name Abu Du’a, in reality the current Caliph Ibrahim. Thus, the same man was – both and at the same time – a moderate leader in the FSA and an extremist leader in the “Islamic Emirate”.
With this information, one can appreciate at its true value the document presented to the Security Council on July 14 by the Syrian Ambassador, Bashar Jaafari. This is a letter from the commander-in-chief of the FSA, Salim Idriss and dated January 17, 2014. It reads: “I hereby inform you that this ammunition sent by the chiefs of staff to leaders of the revolutionary military councils of the Eastern Region must be distributed in accordance with what was agreed upon: two-thirds to the warlords of the el-Nosra front, the remaining third to be distributed between the military and the revolutionary elements in the fight against the bands of IEIL (Islamic Emirate in Iraq and the Levant). We thank you for sending us the proof of delivery of all ammunition, specifying the quantities and qualities, duly signed by the leaders and warlords in person, so we can forward them to the Turkish and French partners. “In other words, two NATO powers (Turkey and France) have delivered ammunition for two thirds to the Al-Nosra Front (classified as a member of al-Qaeda by the Security Council) and one third to the FSA so that it can fight against the “Islamic Emirate”, headed by one of its senior officers. In fact, the FSA has disappeared on the ground and the munitions were therefore intended for two-thirds to al-Qaeda and one third to the “Islamic Emirate”.
With this dual role device, NATO will be able to continue to launch its hordes of jihadists against Syria while claiming to fight them……’
Notice McCain illegally met ‘…Abu Du’a, in reality the current Caliph Ibrahim….’ – as the article explains elsewhere, Caliph Ibrahim is Al Baghdadi.
And the letter showing ‘Turkish and French partners’ sent ammunition to the terrorists.
If anyone reads the ‘Yinon Plan’, they can see that the ‘IS’ are assisting in making it possible, They are trying to break up and Balkanise the areas around Israel, as the Israelis, Americans, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States desire them to do.
Why does Israel give medical assistance to the murderous headchoppers, as well as R&R and covert arms, intel and assistance by attacking Syrian Government targets in Syria?
Why are Israel and Saudi Arabia (and many other ‘Muslim’ Gulf and other countries) openly showing they are really bosom buddies, long suspected but now coming out into the open? Israel is always going on about terrorism (as is the US and it’s cronies), so why do they court Saudi Arabia, the biggest terrorist sponsor on the planet? They support the Saudis and other terroriist sponsorrs not just because they are extremely rich, but because the Salafist Jihadi headchoppers they are providing form the ‘Proxy Warriors’ to attain their Middle East (and further afield) objectives.
The West and Israel also find the Kurds very useful; Kurds make up the great majority of the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’, and the US arms them and uses them in a bid to break up Syria. There have been many indications that they ‘deal’ with the ISIS/IS terrorists, and often a terrorist town or area is handed over without fighting (or with token resistance).
Ditto US; an Iraqi soldier reported that he and his comrades had watched a large number of US Chinook helicopters heading towards IS areas; his comrades cheered, but he pointed out that the IS never fire on the Coalition, only on Iraqi planes. I wonder why that is??
And how come over a year of US and ‘Coalition’ bombing in Iraq saw IS expanding, and only when the Russians came into the fray did IS really get targeted?
Paul
The whole subject of the sudden meteoric rise of IS from a group of rebels to a state with governance, money and manufacturing and oil export capacity suggests a major planning by many outside nations. Foe a long time IS was making billions by exporting oil via Turkey, and nobody knew? Pull the other one. The Russians exposed and dealt with this effectively by bombing the oil tanker convoys at the very beginning of the involvement of the RuAF. THe other fascinating phenomenon is that battles between the SAA and IS are always very protracted and difficult but many by Turkey, for example when the Turkish army attacked Jarablus, on the border it was found to have been deserted by IS. Similarly the advance of the so called SDF was miraculously swift on the west bank of the Euphrates with many reports that there was collusion between IS and the US led SDF. This all coincided with the progress of the SAA towards Deir Ez Zor and later Mayadeen, and in fact the ‘SDF’ was making belligerent threats against the SAA if the crossed the Euphrates . The big exception of course is Al Raqqa which was almost razed to the ground, but then many IS fighters were let out.
I’m posting this here rather than on the current thread, as I’m sure some people will automatically write it off as a wacky CT;
http://yournewswire.com/cia-agent-deathbed-bob-marley/
There is a refutation calling the report “fake news”, here:
https://www.onlinethreatalerts.com/article/2017/12/2/fake-news-cia-agent-confesses-on-deathbed-i-killed-bob-marley/
I found that by Googling “Bill Oxley”. Without checking them all, there appear to be two pro-report YouTubes and the report itself, ranked above the refutation in Google’s search results.
I find the refutation considerably more convincing than the article, but I suspected that the article was false as soon as I read this alleged quote:
– “Bob Marley in 1976 was a very serious threat to the global status quo and to the hidden power brokers implementing their plan for a new world order”
“Hidden power brokers” and “new world order” are common clichés from unwarranted conspiracy theories.
Further, the headline calls “Oxley” a CIA agent, but in the text calls him an officer, and then “an operative with top-level security clearances”. Beyond the obvious confusion here, it seems very unlikely that an intelligence agency would send an officer, or anyone with a high security clearance, to actually perform an assassination; it would breach the principle of plausible deniability. I think the standard procedure is to pay criminal drug addicts etc. to carry out the dirty work.
@ Macky December 3, 2017 at 13:28
It is almost certainly ‘Fake News’, but very near the truth. The correct version, as near as can be assessed, is that Carl Colby, the son of late CIA director William Colby, gave Marley the pair of fancy cowboy boots, one of which was fitted with a copper wire with the cancer agent.
But it was in the same location as the fake ‘YourNewsWire’ article. That site often comes up with spoof stories.
Here is a quick search, but I have been aware of the Colby one for years, as have many Black people:
‘How did Bob Marley die?’: http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/bob-marley-die-2097947
Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens were also murdered, this time by the Mafia, as a big record company had put out a contract on him: ‘THE MOB KILLED BUDDY HOLLY’: http://themobkilledbuddyholly.blogspot.co.uk/
Obviously I don’t know for certain, but the article makes a whole lot of sense.
I had suspected it was not an accident before I read that article.
Any number of such stories could be true, or false, or there may be any number of such plots that no one has ever heard of, and not just by “our” side’s secret agencies.
The problem is secrecy itself.
The US has its laws about disclosure after certain numbers of years, and useful as that is to historians, the disclosure is only partial, and comes too late to do anything practical. Furthermore, intelligence agencies are internally compartmentalised, which creates multiple dark corners in which subterfuge can fester. Read Spycatcher.
There needs to be some sort of framework for checking that objectives are in accordance with declared government policy, that implementation is appropriate to those objectives, and the degree to which outcomes support the objectives. I doubt that such systems could ever be perfect, but there must be immense scope for improvement over the current opacity.
I have never yet found anyone to discuss this with; it’s an idea that has been brewing in my mind for several years.
One source of inspiration is the clever interplay between the Freedom Of Information Act, and the Data Protection Act. Another are the systems of international inspections, such as the IAEA inspections, or the global network that monitors for nuclear explosions. Maybe an international “Best Practice Register” for secret agencies could be implemented, such that countries competed for the highest ratings, causing suspicion to fall most frequently upon the most opaque agencies.
I think there might be more international enthusiasm for such approaches that might be expected. All secret agencies are plagued by the problems of double and triple agents, and by corporate and criminal infiltration and misuse of secret agencies. Obviously, information would be difficult to obtain, but infiltration and off-policy activities within secret agencies must have cost governments dearly; certainly, we know of many leaks.
Any suggestions would be most welcome.
Clark
Interesting thoughts but not feasible. Even the international agencies do not adhere to best practice. Examples are the IAEA and its attitudes to countries grouped into 3 groups, the original 5 powers, those who achieved nuclear weapons by stealth and are now declared or undeclared nuclear powers and those that aspire to have nuclear ambitions. These organisations are heavily influenced by the US. Witness the very poor practice of OPCW in the last episode of the alleged sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun. No on site investigation was carried out and most of the statements and witnesses came from the rebels and the White Helmets.
SA, I feel that the pursuit of perfection should not stand in the way of improvement.
The NPT, IAEA etc. is far from perfect, but has I think been remarkably successful. Never before in history have governments shown such restraint in the acquisition and use of a greatly superior weapons’ technology. The Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty was also remarkably successful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=856fWEltiXo
Regarding secret agencies, secrets are becoming harder to keep. I think we can expect swarms of micro surveillance drones and similar devices within a decade or two. I think blanket surveillance is something we are going to have to accept – I don’t really have an appropriate word, because surveillance is commonly thought of as a government activity, even though most data gathering is performed by the private sector.
Sorry, I have more to write on these subjects, but the words will not flow for me tonight.
@Paul, yes maybe fake news, but not totally convinced by the debunking site Clark linked to, in that the man looks similar but I wouldn’t bet my house that it’s the same man, and also look of the segment of the bedpost, it’s different to the ones in the Polish photoshoot; if the name Bill Oxley could be officially linked to the CIA then there’s less probability of it being fake, but even then still not conclusive of course.
Really?
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://fizjoplaner.pl/images/article/odlezyny.lg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://fizjoplaner.pl/Opisy-Schorzen-urazow.html?page=6&h=483&w=725&tbnid=eyp3RjsbGeAvlM&tbnh=183&tbnw=275&usg=__qXwLU-r9ON4oiK9gNxrh1QEzb4s=&docid=D9PaCN8T-knxgM&itg=1
It is the same man same drip stand same shadows same pyjamas same white hair.
@SA, yes your google photo does look more like the man, and my bad re the bedpost as I’d mistook the thing holding the drip feed mixed up with the bed post ! That’s the second in recent weeks that my eyesight has let me down on this Blog, definitely time for eye-test !
@ Macky December 3, 2017 at 18:0
Not in any way as a hostile comment, it’s not your eyesight, it’s the site you quoted.
It’s a disinformation site.
For a very long time, people, mostly Blacks, have believed, rightly in my opinion, that Bob Marley was assassinated by the son of the CIA director at the time.
There are masses of disinformation on the Internet, most of it created by so-called conspiracy theorists, including many employed by the corporate media. This is why I’m forever cajoling for better standards of verification and reasoning, and arguing against exaggerations, large and small. This particular piece has pretty obviously turned out to be some New World Order conspiracy theorists trying to appropriate an old Rasta story to their own cause. It’s all grist to the mill, eh?
Wise words to apply common sense to the many theories out there, but sadly undermined by your spontaneous combustion due to shock theory!
Dave, that’s called “argument from personal incredulity” or “argument from ignorance” – because you can’t understand how something could happen, it therefore didn’t happen. It neglects that our abilities to understand are always limited. Creationism is similar.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity
Dave, if you wish I’ll go through the collapse sequence step by step, answering your questions as we go.
Would my detractors please note that it was not me that raised this issue once again.
You’ll need to do it within 12 seconds!!!
The rapid collapse is just what you’d expect once you understand the construction of the Twin Towers and the collapse sequence. I went through some calculations with Nikko on an earlier page. Nikko had to withhold figures to protect demolition theory!
No really. Do the momentum calculations, assuming inelastic collisions; the collapses took longer than the theoretical time calculated that way. Inelastic collisions dissipate kinetic energy as energy of deformation. You can calculate that, too, and there is deformation energy equivalent to a large quantity of explosives. But as I said, the collapses proceeded even slower than that, so there is even more energy available for destruction of materials. There really is no mystery about the rapid collapses.
But you don’t need to do any calculations; just watch some vérinage demolitions. They proceed rapidly too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFHEoiUZ7o
Dave, I see your comment accusing me of being audacious (again) has been removed.
Look. If I thought there was something inexplicable about the collapses of the Twin Towers I would say so. I do find the collapse of WTC7 very strange, and I do say so. But the collapses of the Twin Towers all makes sense; the figures check out. So I say so.
I see Channel4 News have now done one of their debunking “Facts Check” on this story, and not all commentators are convinced;
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/938045916078137345
This was an interesting link somebody left, not least for the list of suspicious cancer deaths;
http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2012-02-27/cancer-secret-weapon
Another fine fighting talk piece by Caitlin Johnstone, this time on the worst sort of Conspiracy Theorists;
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagaters-are-the-very-worst-kind-of-conspiracy-theorists-bdeb0f4e496b
Would this be the same Caitlin Johnstone who likes fascists so much she wants to see the left cosying up to them? Johnstone seems so concerned about the “Deep State” and her champion Trump’s supposed fight against them, that little matters like unregulated state capitalism, social inequality and justice and the climate are all irrelevant by comparison. Seems like yet another distraction by either a plant or a useful idiot.
But she does champion conspiracy theories and Kremlin talking points pretty well, so I imagine that goes down rather well with you.
@glenn, you think she’s pro-Trump ?!!
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/while-dems-babbled-about-russia-gop-passed-trickle-up-economics-tax-bill-4be5957c59b1
It’s this simplistic black or white, name calling nonsense that she writes about; you really should try reading her before rubbishing her.
Even more explicit;
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/10-trump-administration-atrocities-going-under-reported-amid-russia-hysteria-35dc07cd9393
Does she support Bernie Sanders? There’s a hint that she might.
I think she just doesn’t know what conspiracy theorists can be like.
Glenn_nl: – “Caitlin Johnstone who likes fascists so much she wants to see the left cosying up to them?”
Could you link examples please? The first of her articles that I saw, “You Are Infinitely More Qualified To Report The News Than These Assholes”, initially gave the impression of being supportive of Trump, though if you read the whole article that isn’t the argument she makes. However, those already inclined to see Trump as in opposition to “the elites” could certainly be encouraged in that view, and might be encouraged to prefer Fox news over CNN. As an example, she wrote:
– “There’s a man sitting in the White House right now who was able to get there using a shitload of confidence and a Twitter account, despite having no redeeming personal characteristics whatsoever”
which neglects Trump’s wealth and connections, depicting him as outside the elite, succeeding despite being a social misfit. Certainly, in this article, Caitlin Johnstone presents Trump as an outsider worthy of being emulated in some ways. My impression is that she’s just a rather strident, impulsive writer who doesn’t think about the various ways her words might be taken.
Hello Clark:
There are examples like this: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/lefties-need-to-stop-being-shy-about-working-with-the-anti-establishment-right-40c27a9dc98e
Incidentally, it’s incredible to see Trump being portrayed as some sort of champion of the little guy, sticking it to the powerful, when he’s got billionaires such as Betsy DeVos, trust-fund babies, a former chairman and CEO from Exxon. Naturally it’s almost exclusively white and male (exceptions made for very powerful and rich women).
The only piece of legislation so far is this massive tax cut for the rich. It benefits Trump personally, along with the elite generally, and does little or nothing for the working poor. It creates a massive budget deficit (which Republicans usually get all hysterical about when a Dem is thinking of spending anything), and this will be balanced on the backs of the poor, with massive cuts to social services.
Usual far-right programme in other words, but trumped-up as a victory for the little guy.
Glenn,
it’s incredible to see Trump being portrayed as some sort of champion of the little guy, sticking it to the powerful
What a weird comment.
C Johnson is clearly not saying any of that. Her appeal is to try and get Lefties to engage with the ‘little guy’ and pursuade them that Trump is not and has never been anything but a pretender who has no concern for their interests.
Glenn, Johnstone does make her position pretty clear in that article; the “Centre”, or as she calls it the unelected power establishment, work first and foremost by deception and propaganda, and until that’s defeated little can be achieved. I’m less ideologically to the Left than you, and Johnstone is very strident, which I’m uncomfortable with myself. But I was surprised to find myself respecting Right-wing Peter Oborne of the Daily Mail for speaking out about “Western” collusion with “rebels” ie. extremists in Syria:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06s0qy9
https://shadowproof.com/2016/02/20/bbc-report-explains-how-us-uk-weapons-flow-to-al-qaida-other-extremists-in-syria/
Brad Warner, punk guitarist and author of the hardcorezen.info blog wrote a few articles along the same lines, the first of which is this one:
http://hardcorezen.info/opening-up-to-ideological-diversity/5455
I think you should read that, and then read Johnstone’s article again, deliberately calming the reactions from your Leftward sensibilities in order to see through to what she’s really saying. I think she has a point, because it’s TRUTH, Justice Peace, and we can’t work toward justice until we’ve got the damn deception out of the way.
Two lines from Caitlin Johnstone’s Russiagaters Are The Very Worst Kind Of Conspiracy Theorists which I very much endorse:
– “Just like with anything else, there are good and bad ways to go about conspiracy theory”
– “Rather than holding their conspiracy theory lightly, they have turned it into a frenzied, uncritical cult”
When most people think about Fascists, they rarely think of the US as the ‘Fourth Reich’. But that is essentially what it became after WWII, with the import of many Nazi War Criminals who were put into important agencies in the US.
The failed ‘Business Plot’ Fascist coup attempt in 1933 clearly showed where Big Business and Banksters’ hearts lie.
When James Jesus Angleton became head of the CIA, he first had to promise Dulles that he would not put him or other major businessmen on polygraphs re their dealings with Nazi Germany DURING WWII:
https://stevenhager420.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/james-jesus-angleton-is-a-key-to-the-jfk-assassination/
‘….Angleton got his powerful post after serving as the Vatican’s OSS liaison during WWII, working closely with Allen Dulles to shield important Nazis who were given new jobs working for US interests after the war. According to Angleton, before getting his promotion, he had to promise Dulles never to put him or any of his Wall Street-connected cronies on lie detectors in order to question them about financial relations with Germany during the war. You see, many US corporations employed neutral countries to trade with the enemy, including Standard Oil, a company owned by Dulles’ cousin by marriage David Rockefeller. If you want to get really rich during war, sell to both sides…..’
SA, would you critique this article for me please:
– If The Saudi Arabia Situation Doesn’t Worry You, You’re Not Paying Attention
A key geopolitical axis is swiftly shifting
by Chris Martenson
Friday, November 10, 2017
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/113426/if-saudi-arabia-situation-doesnt-worry-youre-not-paying-attention
Clark
Thanks for posting this link. This is one of those websites who is trying to sell you a concept and give you so much lead until you subscribe to some sort of membership. What the author is trying to sell is how to prepare for the coming collapse according to how he thinks the exact mechanism of the collapse will be. He may be correct in his predictions, after all i am sure that at some point soon there will be a collapse and that Oil will come into it.
As to the particulars. There is a reasonable resume of the situation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and its history. I can well believe that there is a very strong understanding between the US and KSA and also with UK. From the UK point of view the lack of criticism of KSA at all costs, sometimes to the detriment of our democracy, is very clear, two examples spring to mind, the stifling of legal proceedings in the Al Yamamah affair during the premiership of Thatcher and the banning of the film Death of a Princess. The clear collusion between US,UK and KSA in The Syrian war and the war in Yemen is clear for all to see. There is no clamour about the atrocities in Yemen whereas the siege of Aleppo was made out to be the greatest humanitarian catastrophe. This is clearly not because they share ‘our values’, unless these values are purely made up of dollars. I may also add the recent suppression of intelligence implicating KSA by Theresa May and of course the whole subject of 911.
It is obvious that the ascendance of MBS is very much supported by the West. The fig leaf is fighting corruption, but in fact he now has absolute power. Letting women drive smacks of something that the US and UK told him to do to distract and to pretend that he will introduce a more open type of Islam.
Now back to the article. The analysis is picky and has gaps. There is obviously a Saudi realignment but it is not with China and Russia. In a short succession after the obvious failure in Syria, there was a fallout with Qatar and attempts at destabilisation (and here the author is wrong in saying that Iran came to the rescue, it was Turkey, with Turkish troops in Qatar that protected Qatar not Iranian troops) then the clear attempt at destabilisation of Lebanon that failed and the internal purge. These all indicate that the US and UK and now I have to add Israel are in cahoots with MBS just the opposite of what the article is indicating. Incidentally the collaboration between Israel and KSA is not mentioned in this article. In fact the realignments and manoeuvres all directed at a war with Iran.
Another major failure of analysis in this article is that of course KSA will seek one of the biggest markets in supplying oil to China, but that is in purely trade and economic terms. China is now the golden boy whom everyone is trying to befriend because of thier economic miracle. China in the meanwhile has been more careful in openly supporting any military activity, at least overtly, in the ME. It would be beyond belief to think that KSA with its mighty but ineffective military equipment and a huge new arms purchase from the US is about to form an alliance with Russia and China, laughable really.
The conflict with Iran is also glossed over. If that is the main worry of the Saudis (which it is) then would they really form an alliance with China and Russia who are supportive of Iran?
KSA is an important part of the US petrodollar hegemony and is dependant on it. I doubt that they will try to destabilise this.
The best part of the analysis is that any instability in KSA will certainly cause economic chaos worldwide and that is why, although we would all like the end of the Saudi monarchy, we would certainly not like to see it in the way that the Arab spring has been conducted.
Clark, I have no special expertise but I have also sent this to someone who has good knowledge of both KSA and China and will follow this up if he can throw more insight.
SA, I’m short of time at present, but thank you very much for that; informative and well reasoned.
Thought I would share this with you good people as it had its origins here.
https://johnplatinumgoss.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/a-single-twin-tower-from-beer-cans/
Laughable. For one thing .004″ is 0.1mm not 1 mm. The steel of car body is 1mm thick.
Well actually it is not laughable. It is a decimal point error and the other representation is correct. You’re the one that’s laughable. You only ever come on here to try and point score failing miserably most of the time. What experiments or analogies have you produced? Have you answered KoWN’s repeatedly asked question? Or will you be running away again? Try addressing the whole of the article. You won’t. I think over the years you have well and truly proved who’s the laughable tag team.
Anyway thanks for pointing it out. I have edited it. Perhaps next time you could do it with a little more grace. 🙂
I notice that Kemp’s never answers my questions, especially those bolstered with evidence.
I have asked Kempe simply to chat but received no response. Maybe Kempe simply isn’t chatty. However, on points of simple fact, Kempe is generally right.
SA, I must have raised many dozens of questions, observations, points for discussion etc. on this thread, but it is extremely rare for any of the so-called conspiracy theorists to engage with them. You have saved criticism of such behaviour for Kempe, but it is very much the norm on this thread, merely directed the other way. Until you turned up, I was usually criticised for so much as mentioning Saudi Arabia in connection with 9/11.
Mods, please leave the comment by John Goss at 15:57 so the following point can be made.
John, Craig’s rule is “engage with arguments, not commenters. Play the ball not the man”. Your comment breaks this rule. Look:
– “it is not laughable”. […]. You’re the one that’s laughable…
See the difference? Kempe called the argument laughable; Kempe played the ball. You, John, called Kempe laughable; you played the man. Do you understand? You then broke that rule once again, and another moderation rule twice:
– “You only ever come on here to try and point score […] you have well and truly proved who’s the laughable tag team”
The first phrase imputes motive, contrary to a moderation rule. The second imputes motive by an insinuation that Kempe is working for a “tag team”, ie. part of the conspiracy. This is why people who behave this way, such as yourself John, I call “conspiracy theorists”; you extend the alleged conspiracy in order to protect the theory. Anything can be argued in this manner whether it be true, false, or absurd; please look up The Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Noodly Appendage.
Who knows whether Kemp played the ball or the man? The single sentence which is not a sentence “Laughable.” is ambiguous.
Seeing as Kempe then proceeded to highlight a numerical error, it would seem to be criticism of the argument. Your reply, John, unambiguously played the man.
Have you grasped the scaling problem yet, and how progressive collapse of the Twin Towers is consistent with Newton’s third law?
Kempe’s critique of the article by John Goss is not very good. The article by John Goss has three major problems.
First and most technically, there is the scaling problem. Scaled-down models do not behave the same as the full-size original that they represent. An obvious example is a pendulum. A 25 metre pendulum has a period of about 10 second. If we scale down by 100:1 we have a 0.25 metre pendulum, which obviously will swing faster. Should we expect the period to scale by 100:1 as well, to 0.1 second? In fact, a 0.25 metre pendulum has a period of about 1 second. Scaling is clearly more complex than it first looks, and anyone with a technical interest can explore just how complex it is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_model
– “Similitude is the theory and art of predicting prototype (original object) performance from scale model observations”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similitude_(model)
If we consider the beer can model of the Twin Towers proposed by John Goss at a scale of 1:1158, if they were to suddenly lose their solidity, the material at the highest point would fall to the bottom in 0.27 second. So the material would be acquiring energy from gravity for a much shorter time compared with the 415 metre Twin Towers; at a smaller scale, there is far less energy available for destruction of materials, because we can’t adjust Earth’s gravitational field. From a different but related field:
– ” Geotechnical engineers build scale models of dams, retaining walls, and structures all the time. But these models have one major shortcoming, and that’s the effect of gravity on fluid pressure. Because of their smaller surface area, scale models are subject to much smaller pressures than their full size counterparts. The pressure inside soil and structural members is extremely important to geotechnical engineers.
If you build a 1:100 scale model of a 100′ dam, you’ve really built only an actual-size model of the top 12 inches. The forces inside the model will not resemble the actual behavior of the dam. Engineers get around this by taking that scale model and putting it on a geotechnical centrifuge like the one in the link below. When you put that dam model under a static load of 100 times normal gravity, it will be subjected to the same forces and pressures as the real dam, and you can take useful measurements. “
http://www.nees.rpi.edu/
Incidentally, John’s 1:1158 model could not be tested in this centrifuge because the disparity of scale is far too great – the centrifuge cannot simulate anything near 1158 times Earth’s gravity.
The other problems with John’s article are that at 4.6 inch thickness, his scaled up beer cans are much stronger than the perimeters of the Twin Towers, even allowing for the additional strength of steel over aluminium – we may neglect the core structures because the video record shows that these still stood after the floor assemblies had been destroyed and the perimeters had fallen away outwards. Also, Bazant’s “crush down then crush up” is a highly specific model of progressive collapse, and not the collapse as recognised by most engineers -ie. it’s a straw man argument in the first place.
‘Freelance journalist: ‘Hijacked flight 370 passenger sent photo from hidden iPhone tracing back to secret U.S. military base Diego Garcia’:
https://www.intellihub.com/freelance-journalist-hijacked-flight-370-passenger-sent-photo-hidden-iphone-tracing-back-secret-u-s-military-base-diego-garcia/
This is from 2014, but I have only just come across it. Many Truthers believed from very early on that the MH370 had been taken to Diego Garcia.
And here’s another one:
‘Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Passengers’ Mobile Phones Ring But Not Answered’ Divya Avasthy March 10, 2014 07:44 GMT’:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-passen gers-mobile-phones-ring-not-answered-1439560
De-bunked as a fake shortly after it appeared.
https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-mh370-passenger-philip-wood-sends-photo-text-from-diego-garcia-fake-exif-gps-data.t3397/
My last post link got broken – here it is again:
And here’s another one:
‘Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Passengers’ Mobile Phones Ring But Not Answered’ Divya Avasthy March 10, 2014 07:44 GMT’:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-passengers-mobile-phones-ring-not-answered-1439560
Aslo shown to be irrelevant.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/12/world/asia/mh370-phone-theory-debunked/index.html
‘Fierce battles break out between ISIS and Taliban all over Afghanistan’:
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/fierce-battles-break-isis-taliban-afghanistan/?
Yet further evidence about whose interests ISIS works for. They must have entered Afghanistan via Pakistan, as there’s no way they could get through Iran. And Afghan Regime forces attack the Taliban at the same time.
CIA and Saudi plotting springs to mind.
The entities that now call themselves ISIS in Afghanistan are not fighters from Iraq or Syria. Rather, they’re primarily disaffected Taliban members and insurgents from other groups who seized an opportunity to “rebrand” themselves as ISIS.
In other words local recruits. You can’t stop ideas crossing borders.
Vegas plot thickens:
‘Stephen Paddock – Brother Bruce Paddock – Child Porn And Trafficking – More Specifics Bring More Questions’:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/stephen-paddock-brother-bruce-paddock-child-porn-and-trafficking-more-specifics-bring-more-questions/
‘…In fact, Bruce Paddock was just arrested in North Hollywood, California. If you can believe this, they arrested him at an assisted living center. They took him out in a wheelchair, and he was found with 600 child porn images. It is being said these images were some of the worst seen in child porn.
The details of the investigation that led to the arrest have yet to be made public, but a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles County lists 20 potential counts and indicates the alleged crimes occurred in 2014. According to sources within the LAPD, Bruce was “squealing like a pig” about his brother Stephen’s role in running a child trafficking ring….’
Strange that elsewhere he’s reported in not having any contact with his brother for at least 10 years.
http://www.dailynews.com/2017/10/27/las-vegas-shooters-brother-bruce-paddock-arrested-in-valley-village-pleads-not-guilty-to-child-porn-charges/
i think the only conclusion we can reach is that they both have/had mental problems.
Oddly enough, I trust ‘Intellihub’ more than ‘Metabunk’, which is a sh*t site that purports to debunk every ‘conspiracy theory’ under the sun, clearly a USG funded or run site.
Paul – since you actually do respond to reasonable questions, perhaps you could enlighten me here.
We acknowledge that a mass shooting takes place every day in the US. So what’s the threshold for it becoming a suspected “false flag” event? The only criteria to make it one, as far as I can tell, is the notoriety of the incident. The one in that Texas church the other day didn’t raise an eyebrow among conspiracy buffs, despite dozens being killed. Is it only when it makes international news that it’s worthy of the term “false flag”?
I’ve asked a couple of other people, but they pretend they don’t understand the question. (Maybe that’s giving them too much credit – perhaps they actually cannot understand it.)
Certainly the Paddock massacre was not a ‘false flag’ one. He just wanted to embarrass the Bureau for wanting to protect OJ Simpson no matter what.
@ Trowbridge H. Ford December 5, 2017 at 12:26
Ah, good to be assured. We can forget all the REPORTS of multiple shooters, shots coming from helicopters, missing people, survivors deaths within short space of time in ‘car crashes’, ‘natural deaths’, ‘Terror Drills’, guy who parked Paddock’s car saying he only had a small amount of luggage (subsequently to ‘disappear’, or be ‘disappeared’.
And of course, a guy with such a highly tuned thirst for justice in the OJ Simpson case, would kill scores of innocent festival goers – yeh, I suppose that makes a whole lotta sense.
@ glenn_nl December 5, 2017 at 10:06
‘…We acknowledge that a mass shooting takes place every day in the US. So what’s the threshold for it becoming a suspected “false flag” event?…’
Firstly, I do not believe a mass shooting takes place every day. If you really believe that, then please show evidence.
Reports of shootings, even with only one victim, become liable to be called ‘False Flags’ or the official reports or narratives come under scrutiny by Truthers when reports don’t add up, when there are extremely suspicious ‘Terror Drills’ just before or during the attack, when the alleged terrorist/s leave identification; when the alleged terrorist/s ‘commit suicide’ or are shot by police or others instead of being captured and brought to trial; when the alleged terrorist/s are found to have been ‘known to the Security Forces’, or even their agents, you know the sort of thing.
‘…The one in that Texas church the other day didn’t raise an eyebrow among conspiracy buffs, despite dozens being killed. Is it only when it makes international news that it’s worthy of the term “false flag”?….’
Re the Texas church shooting, it did of course, make international news:
‘Texas gunman fled mental health clinic and smuggled weapons on to military base’:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/07/texas-gunman-shooting-sutherland-springs-devin-kelley
That article indicates a cover-up mentality by the US Military, in not reporting previous crimes to the appropriate authorities, and in the accused getting a ‘slap on the wrist’ one year Military prison sentence for smuggling arms into a base in order to fulfil his threat to kill officers, including the Commanding Officer.
There may yet be information forthcoming that could make this attack also subject to ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ attacks.
Yes, I do try to respond to ‘reasonable questions’, but when I get slagged off or otherwise p*ssed off with ‘the usual culprits’ attacks, I stop responding.
I have asked a ‘certain culprit’ probably three, four or five times to answer a question I have put to him/her; yet without responding, ‘him/her’ pops up again like clockwork to try to rubbish another comment I make weeks later.
So, it is hardly surprising I stop responding to them.
The ones who yelp so much about attacks against them, are in reality the main attackers.
Well you would, wouldn’t you.
Kempe, play the ball, not the man. I tell everyone else; so there’s no reason you should be an exception.
Paul Barbara, 03:27:
– “Metabunk […] is a sh*t site that purports to debunk every ‘conspiracy theory’ under the sun, clearly a USG funded or run site”
For goodness’ sake, Metabunk is a forum; anyone could post there, including you! That so many conspiracy theories get debunked only illustrates how much bunk there is in so many conspiracy theories, which is why I’ve been trying to raise standards – the vast excess of rubbish makes us all look like idiots.
The origins of the site are irrelevant. What matters is evidence, verification and sound reasoning.
You can learn a lot at Metabunk if you have the determination to follow the arguments, which inevitably get fragmented by the format on any forum. On a thread at Metabunk which had some engineers contributing, I learned that many of them were quite dismissive of Bazant’s “crush down then crush up” theory – though not of progressive collapse.
Kempe, I’d be grateful for your take on this 13 minute video which claims that cell phone calls couldn’t have been received on the ground from 911 flights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHmrEGYoZAU
Node, it seems you have a lot of checking to do. The experiment in the video seems to have been performed over a highly populated region, where lower power cellphone base stations are used. Rural base stations have greater range:
– “To serve a specific region, the region is divided into separate sub-areas (cells). These extend like a honeycomb over the entire Federal territory, but have different sizes. The diameter of a cell ranges from less than 100 metres in inner cities to 15 kilometres in rural areas. The more transmitter locations there are, the smaller the individual cells can be. The smaller the cell, in turn, the lower the broadcasting power of the individual antennae can be”
15km = 15000m = almost 50,000 feet. I suggest you familiarise yourself with the counterarguments and then build a more solid case than that presented in the usual dodgy YouTubes. Two links to help you do so:
http://www.911myths.com/index.php?title=Cellphone_calls_faked
http://www.911myths.com/index.php?title=AK_Dewdney_and_Project_Achilles
Thinking about geometry, higher altitude, combined with the greater range of rural base stations, would increase the time available for hand-off between base stations.
Google searches I made in composing my two replies to Node above (December 6, 00:54 and December 6, 01:15) proved relevant to the recent “Google is censoring the Internet” discussion on this thread.
I knew that 911myths.com might provide some relevant counterarguments because I had visited that site previously, but I couldn’t remember the precise URL so I tried a Google search on “9/11 myths”. The first page of results contained only mainstream links. I had to search on “9/11myths.com”, at which Google placed the appropriate link at the top of the list. But many commenters here would probably regard 911myths.com as a “government disinformation site”, so this would seem to confirm my theory that Google are prioritising mainstream sites rather than downgrading selected sites.
Then I saw a link at 911myths.com to their YouTube channel, so I followed it. Guess what? “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines”. Hah! So it isn’t just the “conspiracy theorists” that suffer the axe at Google’s YouTube. Moral – always look for evidence that contradicts your theory, or mostly you’ll just find confirmation of what you already believe.
Of course I could extend the conspiracy theory by assuming that 911myths.com’s YouTube channel has been terminated just to make it look as though debunkers get a hard time from YouTube too….
More seriously, please don’t assume I’m “just supporting the official story”. The techniques I’m advocating are exactly the same whichever narrative you apply them to. With so many parties, each trying to convince us of their own pet narrative, deliberately seeking out contrary evidence and applying critical thinking is our only hope of iterating towards truth. Truth, Justice, Peace. Remember, “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about the answers” – clever bloke, Thomas Pynchon.
‘What to Expect From BBC Panorama and Guardian’s Whitewash of UK Gov’t Funding Terrorists in Syria’:
http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/12/04/bbc-panorama-free-syrian-police-foreign-office-scandal/
’21st Century Wire says…
The BBC will be carrying out a controlled journalistic “explosion” on their Panorama programme, airing tonight in the UK. Their report, dramatically titled, “Jihadis You Pay For” is about to expose UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the funding of extremist and terrorist groups in Syria via their “Free Syrian Police” project set-up in ‘rebel-held’ areas of Syria since 2014.
To referee this virtual clash of the titans, The Guardian has been drafted-in to do the honours.
“The report, Jihadis You Pay For, will claim that Foreign Office money paid to the FSP reached people with links to the extremist group al-Nusra Front.” ~ The Guardian
Mike Raddie of BSNEWS commented:
“Is the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey attempting to whitewash the massive scandals of FCO and BBC funding and working with extremist groups in Syria? Why did he not ask Vanessa Beeley or Robert Stuart to explain how these UK institutions are working alongside al Qaeda/ISIS linked groups inside Syria?
Is it any wonder the Guardian has closed reader feedback on the story, less than 8 hours after it was posted? “Comment is Free” so long as you don’t mention unsayable truths such as BBC’s Panorama and Boris Johnson’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office are both working with and financing al Qaeda in direct contravention of UK anti-terror legislation.”
Boffey’s response to Raddie’s inquiry:
3 Dec
bsnews
@bsnews1
Is @DanielBoffey attempting to whitewash the massive scandals of #FCO AND #BBC paying and working with extremist groups in #Syria? Why did he not ask @VanessaBeeley (http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/12/02/white-helmets-local-councils-uk-fco-financing-terrorism-syria-taxpayer-funds/ …) or @cerumol (https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/bbc-panorama-team-embedded-with-islamic-state-partner-group/ …) we wonder? https://twitter.com/DanielBoffey/status/937196564942147585 …
Daniel Boffey
@DanielBoffey
Is it snowing in Moscow yet?
9:47 AM – Dec 3, 2017
20 20 Replies 2 2 Retweets 1 1 like
Twitter Ads info and privacy
In other words, if you don’t adhere the mainstream media’s narrow narrative, then you must be a Russian agent.
We thought that “Comment is Free” (CIF) at The Guardian, but apparently not. Perhaps #CommentIsNotFree or #CINF would be appropriate hashtags when discussing this on Twitter.
Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire made the following point via Facebook:
“Nice to see the Mainstream Media fraternity close ranks this morning on UK FCO/Funding Terrorism story. Just remember which media outlet broke this story first. None of these MSM outlets will dare link to us, or mention name Vanessa Beeley because then they would have to acknowledge this story is much bigger than the little pigeon hole they’ve carved out – which they will “manage” into oblivion, as with tonight’s BBC Panorama soft ball pitch. Who’s the real independent media? Here, we beat them, and with a much bigger story…”
The last thing the BBC want to come out is the truth, which they know they would get if Vanessa Beeley or Robert Stuart (or Eva Bartlett) were included in the program.
Paul
Very admirable post. This is really what we should concentrate on, the link between our security services and our complacent media, KSA and the funding of AQ which was after all started to fight the USSR in Afghanistan. The principle is that we are quite happy to fund terrorists as long as we can brand them as freedom fighters or moderate rebels and fight over there. This is the conspiracy we are facing and I urge you to focus all your energy on this. After all it fits in very well with 911 as you we’ll know.
By the way, I stopped commenting in the Guardian because anything you say is censored if they don’t like what you say. It became very boring. Do you look at off Guardian website? They had a whole series on that. I once told the Guardian that they were whitewashing terrorism and of course comment was very quickly deleted.
SA, I urge you to resume commenting in the Guardian, because that is one of the ways in which issues get forced into the mainstream. It seems unlikely that the Guardian‘s entire moderation team can be carefully vetted to support all the various omission and distortions we find in the mainstream, and moderators have social and family lives outside work. Guardian moderators are presumably hired on the basis that they’ll be upholding the community guidelines, not enforcing political censorship, so some will kick back over specific deletion instructions, or speak outside work of the dilemma they’re being placed in.
I’ve seen it work several times, from the comment section of this blog. This site’s commenters place comments on mainstream articles. At first they appear, then they get deleted after being placed, then comments aren’t opened in the first place, and finally the mainstream have to acknowledge the matter.
@ SA December 6, 2017 at 09:23
Yes, I sometimes read ‘Off Guardian’. I quite often comment in the Guardian,Telegraph, Mail and Independent. Most comments are allowed.
With the Guardian on the BBC program, the top comments were all very good, and surpassed by miles the number of pro BBC and Guardian comments: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/03/bbc-syria-al-nusra-foreign-office
At last! And thanks, Paul.
I advise against excessive cynicism about this. This is a success for the independent media, having at last forced the mainstream to acknowledge this issue. Large organisations like the BBC and the Guardian have massive inertia – against which, the quality of the offerings from the alternative media leaves a lot to be desired, forever zooming of into untenable assertions. Maybe now we will see a narrowing of that gap, hopefully from both sides.