ISRAEL GETS DESPERATE: FAKES OSAMA TAPE
Damian Lataan | January 25, 2010
It seems Israel is becoming anxious about the American peoples commitment to Israeli Zionist dreams of creating a Greater Israel. They are so anxious that they have released a tape that they are claiming is the very dead Osama bin Laden threatening the US with acts of terrorism if they continue to support Israel.
This latest tape is the most blatantly transparent piece of nonsense that has ever emanated from the Israelis and their allies and demonstrates how fearful they are of losing the support of the American people and the West generally. The give-away for this particular piece of garbage is the way the Israelis have tried to link the al Qaeda cause to the Palestinian’s cause.
American’s, and indeed, many in the West, are becoming rapidly disillusioned by Israel’s behaviour over the past few years. In particular, since the release of the Goldstone Report that showed Israel’s warcrimes in the Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in which over a thousand Gazans were brutally murdered, people have become alerted to Israeli skulduggery and attempted cover-ups for their crimes. And, in latest developments in the West Bank, people in the West are increasingly becoming aware that the Netanyahu Zionist government has no intention whatsoever of ever allowing a Palestinian state to exist despite all the talk of talks, negotiations, roadmaps, accords, etc. As recently as this last Sunday Netanyahu said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank will remain Israeli.
Israel, by linking the Palestinian cause with Osama bin Laden is attempting to undermine the Palestinians quest for a sovereign state and in the process claim that Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies and that the struggle against ‘terrorism’ intrinsically links Palestinian fighters with al Qaeda and, therefore, the US must continue to support Israel in their fight against the Palestinians seeking their own sovereign state.
Unfortunately for the Israeli Zionists and their supporters in the West, the vast majority of the peoples of the world are unlikely to fall for this nonsense. It is only the extreme right-wing Murdoch style press that are actually pushing this nonsense as a given fact while other more progressive and realistic media sources are feeding the news of bin Laden’s latest messages as ‘purportedly of Osama bin Laden’ or ‘claiming to be from bin Laden’.
Oddly, the Los Angeles Times takes the tack that bin Laden is claiming credit for the Christmas Day bombing plot but then states that US intelligence (and I use the word ‘intelligence’ advisedly) officials have raised doubts about bin Laden’s role in the plot and suggest that it was an “attempt to score propaganda points for a plot already claimed by an increasingly independent faction of his movement in Yemen”.
Bin Laden was allegedly responsible for the most successful terrorist attack ever perpetrated destroying three major buildings and severely damaging the hub of US defence, so, even if bin Laden were alive, why on earth would he put his hand up to admit to the miserable failure of some bloke failing to blow his groin to bits with not much more than a large fire cracker that turned out to be just a damp squib? And where’s the propaganda brownie points in that?
Desperation has truly set in.
What Robert Gates Didn’t Say – And The US Media Hides – About Blackwater In Pakistan
Two Pakistani employees of an American defense contractor engaged by the US Embassy in Islamabad have been linked to two attacks on Pakistani military and the assassination of a Brigadier. If this is not alarming, then consider that US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s name has come up in an investigation where thousands of dollars were paid in bribes to Interior Ministry to smuggle illegal weapons into Pakistan. Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost. When Pakistan takes countermeasures, US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. Time for some straight talk.
By AHMED QURAISHI | 23 January 2010
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan. Immediately after the statement, Pentagon tried to put a spin on his words.
But US meddling inside Pakistan –by posting private US defense contractors under diplomatic cover of the US embassy – is a reality for most Pakistanis. Some of these Americans have been caught disguised as Taliban right in the heart of Islamabad. Some Pakistanis were manhandled by some of these American militiamen on the streets of at least two Pakistani cities in recent months.
Since Pakistan is not Iraq or Afghanistan despite all the US direct and indirect misinformation, these US covert operators were arrested on several occasions.
The mainstream US media continues to keep the good American people and the world opinion in the dark about this. But this is probably one of the biggest untold stories in America’s war on terror. This is about the United States trying to put boots on the ground inside Pakistan through the help of a pro-US government in Islamabad that shares [or at least key figures in it] the US objective of containing and limiting the ability of Pakistan’s military to influence the country’s foreign policy. This is about Pakistan wanting to keep an independent foreign policy versus Pakistan blindly serving US policy on Afghanistan, India and China.
Mr. Gates tried to put a gloss on this US covert meddling when he said, ‘Well, they’re [Blackwater and DynCorp] operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.’
Not true. The truth is that the issue is so serious that, according to Pakistani investigators, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson is a suspect in a case of bribes amounting to little over US $ 270,000 paid by DynCorp in 2009 to senior officials at the federal Interior Ministry in Pakistan. The money went in exchange for allowing illegal weapons into Pakistan to be used by private US defense contractors without informing the country’s security departments and intelligence agencies. Ms. Patterson personally lobbied Pakistani officials for this concession to DynCorp. She even wrote a letter to Pakistani officials, followed by a letter by her Deputy Head of Mission Mr. Gerald Feierstein, asking Pakistani Interior Ministry officials to issue permits for weapons to be used by DynCorp in the ‘entire territory of Pakistan.’ The US ambassador is directly linked to the probe, which has resulted in the arrest of a key aide to Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior. But the government of President Zardari will not dare allow Pakistani investigators to pursue the US Ambassador’s role in the scandal. A key question in the probe is how the US Embassy and DynCorp allowed the cargo of illegal weapons into Pakistan. According to one lead, a huge cache of weapons reached a Pakistani tribal leader on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, who in turn wrote to the Interior Ministry announcing he was ‘gifting’ the weapons to a Pakistani subcontractor of DynCorp.
Incidents like this and others raised alarm bells inside Pakistani security departments and the intelligence community. In effect, key figures in President Zardari’s government were found to have given approval for the entry of a large number of US citizens into Pakistan for ‘official US government business’ without explaining what that is. When Pakistani authorities tried to get to the bottom of how private US defense contractors ended up inside Pakistan in large numbers and what they were exactly doing here, US officials and media launched what appears to be a media trial of Pakistan, accusing the country of ‘harassing’ US diplomats and denying visas to them because of alleged anti-Americanism.
The unwillingness of the Zardari government to confront Washington and Pakistan’s generally weak media outreach skills allowed Washington to paint this as a case of anti-Americanism fueled by war on terror.
‘Conspiracy theories’ is another label that US officials and media have increasingly used recently as a cover to hide serious violations of diplomatic norms and sovereignty involving undercover private US operatives inside Pakistan.
This is how the Wall Street Journal tried to delegitimize serious Pakistani concerns raised during Mr. Gates’ visit in a report filed from Islamabad whose opening line read as follows, “U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is overseeing wars with Sunni militants in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, he’s facing a different foe: the pervasive conspiracy theories that fuel widespread anti-American feelings here.”
The truth is that there are no conspiracy theories but real events, reported and documented, that raise questions over US political, diplomtic, and covert meddling inside Pakistan. Here is a list:
1. NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE: In July 2009, four US ‘diplomats’ were arrested inside the maximum security perimeter around Pakistan’s premier nuclear facility at Kahuta. They failed to tell Pakistani investigators what they were doing there and how they managed to slip through the security checkpoints in the area. US Embassy intervened to rescue the four ‘diplomats’ after almost three hours in detention, citing diplomatic immunity. President Zardari’s government refused to let Pakistani security authorities press charges.
2. SUSPICIOUS CONDUCT: On Oct. 6, 2009, Pakistani police arrested two Dutch diplomats roaming the streets of Islamabad without a number plate carrying advanced weapons. Pakistani police were surprised when security personnel from the US Embassy reached the scene to rescue the Dutch. The Americans used their contacts within the Zardari government to get everyone released. Later, Pakistan Foreign Office summoned US and Dutch diplomats for a private meeting over the incident. But the Pakistani government refused to demand a public explanation from US and Dutch diplomats despite recommendations from police and security officials.
3. FACILITATING INDIAN ACTIVITIES: In this high profile case in May 2009, a US diplomat arranged a small meeting between an Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani federal government officials at a private house. The invited Pakistanis worked in civilian positions, including one with access to Prime Minister’s Office. It appeared that the US diplomat was basically facilitating the Indian to meet senior officials who otherwise would be inaccessible for him. Pakistan Foreign Office took serious exception to the meeting, publicly reprimanded the Pakistani officials who attended the meeting but stopped short of seeking explanation from the US embassy. According to Pakistani investigators, for a US diplomat to indulge in facilitating possible espionage linked to an Indian diplomat was a matter of grave concern. It also fit with the US policy of exercising tremendous pressure on the pro-US government in Islamabad to give concessions to India at the expense of Pakistani strategic interests.
4. COVERT US MILITIAS IN THE HEART OF PAKISTAN: In September 2009, undercover US agents were found to have recruited a total of 100 former elite Pakistani military commandos to create rapid-intervention teams for unknown purposes. A hundred more were under training at a secret facility camouflaged as a workshop on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital when it was raided by Pakistani police. It turned out that DynCorp was training the men. US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson brought DynCorp to Pakistan by telling Pakistani officials that the private defense contractor would provide security to embassy buildings. But she never explained why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias on Pakistani soil without informing the Pakistani government or military or the intelligence agencies. Some of those who were under training at the time of the raid said that DynCorp focused on recruiting retired officers who had links and contacts within the Pakistani military and could glean information from their sources. [See video and pictures]
5. PUSHY US DIPLOMATS: The US Embassy in Islamabad has made it its business to mount pressure on owners of Pakistani newspapers to curtail or expel columnists and commentators critical of US policy. Specially targeted are those who expose how the US Embassy is meddling in Pakistani affairs and expanding the US footprint inside Pakistan. Last year, Ambassador Patterson sent a letter to one of the largest Pakistani media groups accusing a columnist of endangering American lives and succeeded in pushing her out. The US Embassy is also recruiting opinion makers within the Pakistani media, academia and military in order to promote the US agenda even at the cost of Pakistani interests, dismissing critics as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and accusing them of anti-Americanism. A senior Pakistani journalist Syed Talat Hussain exposed US activities in the following words,
“Pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust (…) A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan.”
6. HARASSING PAKISTANIS: Private US security contractors, or militiamen, have been involved in at least three incidents registered by the Pakistani police where armed Americans physically assaulted unarmed ordinary Pakistanis in public places. In one case, the nephew of a senior member of President Zardari’s own government was manhandled and locked up in the toilet of a gas station by men described as armed military-looking civilian Americans.
7. RESISTING POLICE CHECKS: In at least five incidents, US ‘diplomats’ disguised as Taliban, complete with beards and Pashto language skills, were stopped at several police checkpoints in Islamabad and Peshawar. In some cases, these American ‘diplomats’ tried to speed through police barriers. In one recent case, this resulted in a brief police chase, where a Pakistani officer dragged the US ‘diplomats’ back to the police picket and forced the Americans to apologize to Pakistani police officers. Again, no charges were pressed because these private US agents carried diplomatic passports.
8. ENGINEERING DOMESTIC POLITICS: As recently as December 2009, US ambassador in Islamabad was found meeting senior Pakistani politicians at private homes of mutual friends in unannounced meetings restricted to 3 to 4 persons. The ambassador asked her guests to publicly support the embattled pro-US President Zardari. US diplomats in Islamabad and officials in Washington have been blatantly interfering in Pakistani politics. In addition to helping form the incumbent coalition government in Islamabad, made up of pro-US parties, US officials have been busy trying to save both Mr. Zardari and his key political adviser and ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani. US officials in Washington have been briefing sympathetic US journalists about this. In one case, columnist Trudy Rubin had this to say while discussing Pakistan in an article published last month:
“Here is the first piece of good news: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have weathered a campaign by opponents, including the military, to force him out of office. Zardari has deep flaws, but his ouster would have hampered efforts to fight the jihadis. So would the removal, now averted, of Pakistan’s effective ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, whom the Pakistani military had unfairly blamed for conditions that Congress imposed on aid to Pakistan.”
9. BRIBES AND ILLEGAL WEAPONS: This case is stunning because of the direct involvement of US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson in lobbying for DynCorp. The company ended up bribing Interior Ministry officials to smuggle banned weapons into Pakistan and then went on to raise private militias and hire retired Pakistani military officers to run rapid deployment teams and possibly even spy on the Pakistani military.
10. DEMONIZATION OF PAKISTAN: Since 2007, US officials and US media has systematically demonized Pakistan worldwide, creating false alarm over Pakistan’s strategic arsenal. US officials and media have also pushed to bracket Pakistan along with Iraq and Afghanistan in order to justify a possible military intervention. When Pakistan resisted US meddling recently, the US media again went on rampage, accusing Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassment of US diplomats. Additionally, there has been a marked increase of lectures and studies by US think-tanks inviting unknown separatist individuals and groups to speak and fan ethnic separatism inside Pakistan and theorize on the breakup of the country.
11. ABETTING TERROR INSIDE PAKISTAN: The suspicions about why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias inside the federal Pakistani capital almost turned real when a suspect in the attack on the Pakistani military headquarters in October 2009 was allegedly found to have been recruited by DynCorp. In a second case, another suspected DynCorp recruit was found involved in assassinating a senior Pakistani military officer as he drove to work. In other words, two Pakistani employees of a US defense contractor engaged by the US embassy have been linked to two terrorist attacks on the Pakistani military. Add to this that Pakistan’s military and intelligence are a favorite punching bag for the United States and its allies, like India and Britain, and the picture of what the US is doing in Pakistan becomes even more disturbing.
These points explain how ill-motivated the US complaints about delaying visas and alleged anti-Americanism in Pakistan are. This is what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Gates are loath to share with the American people and the world public opinion.
© 2007-2009. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Thoughts on “terrorism” and security theater
By Joaquin Bustelo | Excerpt | January 10, 2010
The attempted blowing up of Delta Flight 253 shows extremely limited operational capacity by Al-Qaeda. Compared to the earlier actions like 9/11, the sending of a lone passenger, who bought his ticket with cash and traveled without luggage, and was unable to detonate the explosive he had, is quite feeble. It also seems to indicate that what is left of Al-Qaeda has either a monomaniacal fixation on aviation or no confidence in its own people being able to operate in the United States once they get off the plane.
But perhaps more revealing was the U.S. handling of this individual: a man who paid cash for his ticket and had no luggage –two circumstances that supposedly should set off alarm bells calling for extra screening– provoked no such response. Nor did his father’s turning him in as a potential terrorist weeks before the attack trigger any effective action. The ostensible reason –the “consular” (read: CIA) official in Nigeria who took the information misspelled the man’s name only shows the pervasive culture of incompetence that has settled over the country. Complemented with the complacency that allowed the designers of the terrorist and visa matching software to not even offer what Google does to the average internet user — a list of alternative spellings if there are no or few hits.
Worse was the response after the fact — no one allowed to go to the bathroom or handle in-cabin possessions in the last 90 minutes of international flights. The U.S. government INSISTS that planes be blown up, if at all, well ahead of their scheduled arrival. It’s a sensible measure that displays the modern version of hard-headed Yankee practicality: sparing people a fruitless trip to the airport and keeping grieving relatives out of TV camera viewfinders, which is the sort of thing that can drive a president’s popularity down in a hurry.
Further measures are in the works: a billion dollar’s worth of peep show scanners. Sure, there are all kinds of substances they wouldn’t pick up but hey, at least it reminds the public to be VERY SCARED and –or so it is hoped– that the government is trying to protect them. The machines are being configured so they DON’T store a record of each scan. This because even though the software has been written to produce a photographic negative of the nude body, storing the image of minors would still run afoul of child pornography laws.
And, of course, we have the designation of more than a dozen countries for heightened harassment of its citizens. How much “thought” went into this measure is shown by the inclusion of Cuba, simply because US propaganda puts the island on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, to justify the blockade, which fools absolutely no one, judging by the well-nigh unanimous yearly condemnations of the blockade by the UN General Assembly. But they wanted some sort of “objective” criteria for the
profiling, so they highlighted that it applied to people from “state sponsors of terrorism.” Yet then tying the “countries of interest” like Afghanistan and Nigeria to the terrorist one has only intensified the hornets nest of diplomatic complications for the state department, as US pet and puppet regimes say, in essence: “we’ve spent years brown-nosing and THIS is the thanks we get?”
As for the effectiveness of the measure, it can be mathematically PROVEN that this kind of targeted screening is even less effective than merely random screening. Ditto for “no fly” lists. The reason is that, assuming a certain minimum level of resources and resourcefulness on the part of the attackers, what is ACTUALLY being done is provide a road map to accessing the less-scrutinized passenger cue. If you have been barred from flying under a certain name with an Afghani passport, choose a different name with, say, Sri Lankan documents.
This means that the chances of detection are less than if the intensive screening resources were randomly distributed among all travelers.
This is largely what is known as “security theater,” alleged precautions that in reality afford little or no additional security, like the posting of national guard troops in airports right after September 11 — with the soldiers barred from carrying live ammo for their rifles.
The Bogus Flight 253 ‘One-Way Ticket’ Meme: Anatomy Of A Myth
By Justin Elliott | TPM | January 11, 2010
In a remarkable example of how bad information can travel far and wide, dozens of media outlets around the world have said Umar Abdulmutallab was traveling on a one-way ticket to Detroit when he allegedly tried to blow up Flight 253, even though that has never been substantiated and appears to be flat wrong.
Abdulmutallab’s “one-way ticket” has been cited in recent days by the AP, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, even though the Nigerian government said Dec. 28 that Abdulmutallab had a round-trip ticket, and provided details to back it up.
The “one-way ticket” meme was originally sourced to anonymous U.S. officials and has since been recited as an undisputed fact.
It has been referenced repeatedly by commentators attacking the U.S. government for missing red flags about Abdulmutallab. See for example this Michael Gerson column in the Jan. 6 Post (“Airline attack shows Obama’s listless approach to terrorism”) and this Michael Mukasey Wall Street Journal effort (“The president’s job is not detecting bombs at the airport but neutralizing terrorists before they get there.”)
In a typical case on Dec. 28 — when the accurate information was already available — CNN anchor Erica Hill asked: “So, just how did a guy on a terror watch list with a one-way ticket paid for in cash, with no luggage … manage to board a U.S. airliner and allegedly try to blow it to pieces? Simply put tonight, who screwed up?”
And here’s Rush Limbaugh on Friday: “When a 20-something Muslim male buys a one-way ticket with cash and has no luggage, that’s not a dot. That’s a fire alarm! He may as well have “I’m a terrorist” taped on his T-shirt.”
But published reports on Dec. 28 cited the conclusion of the Nigerian government that Abdulmutallab had a round-trip ticket to Detroit. It had been purchased in Ghana on Dec. 16 for $2,831, according to the AP, citing Civil Aviation Authority director Harold Demuren. His return date was found by the Nigerians to be Jan. 8. (A Dutch government report described by the International Herald Tribune on Dec. 31 also said Abdulmutallab had a round-trip ticket, but it’s not clear whether the Dutch were simply relying on the Nigerians’ conclusion.) A full account of Demuren’s comments can be found in the Nigerian newspaper The Nation here.
While the New York Times published a correction on Dec. 30 saying it had erroneously reported Abdulmutallab’s ticket was one-way, many outlets that have mentioned the one-way ticket haven’t run corrections.
So where did the false meme come from? Anonymous U.S. government sources. And unless there’s classified information suggesting otherwise, those sources were clearly mistaken.
The first citation of a “one-way ticket” we could find is a report on Christmas day by MSNBC (cached version here): “Federal officials identified the man as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of Nigeria, who was traveling one way, without a return ticket.”
Another early reference is in the Dec. 26 edition of the New York Daily News: “Officials said Abdulmutallab was traveling one way, without a return ticket.”
MSNBC’s Pete Williams tells TPMmuckraker: “Though there were federal officials who initially said it was one-way, we’ve [been] saying since that it was round trip, which it clearly was.”
But there are a whole lot of media consumers out there who believe Abdulmutallab came to Detroit on a one-way ticket.
The “one-way ticket” has been cited by CNN, Fox, Time, Newsweek, the AP, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Gannett News Service, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the Sacramento Bee, the Globe and Mail, the Washington Times, Congressional Quarterly and many other outlets, according to a review by TPMmuckraker.
The Today Show’s Matt Lauer even asked about the one-way ticket in a question to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (who did not address the matter in her answer).
The only substantiated reference to a one-way ticket we could find is the statement by a Ghanaian official last week that Abdulmutallab purchased a one-way ticket in cash from Accra, Ghana, to Lagos, Nigeria. That was in addition to the purchase of the ticket from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, according to Deputy Information Minister Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal says Abdulmutallab took Virgin Nigeria flight 804 from Accra to Lagos on Dec. 24, before getting on a plane en route to Amsterdam.
There are few signs that the “one-way” meme will die any time soon.
The AP, which two weeks ago reported the correct information from Nigeria, ran a story Friday (“Experts say terror watch lists have limited uses”) stating that Abdulmutallab purchased a one-way fare.
The BBC’s ‘Conspiracy Files’
By Paul Holme | January 12, 2010
At 16:15 local time Hong Kong and the Philippines, on Saturday, 9 Jan., the BBC World News service broadcast “The Conspiracy Files,” concerning lingering suspicions about 9/11 — specifically the anomalous, sudden, and complete collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by a plane.
This documentary was, as you might expect, as complete a snow job as the weather presently smothering the UK.
It left me with two lasting impressions:
1. That the relatively unprepared viewer — such as I would take the majority to be — would accept its conclusions as ‘the truth.’ The BBC, like CNN and I suppose Fox News, is the modern-day equivalent of the Bible for many who watch it regularly. It is their Authority, an esteemed organ of “objective” reporting, and so they approach it with their critical defenses down — especially in matters where they can’t claim expertise, and the more so when the BBC solemnly quotes such other purveyors of mainstream truth as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (whose graphic simulation of a beam buckling in Building 7 was deemed sufficient to convince us that every real beam and column gave way likewise, and simultaneously).
2. That it is — and has always been — the inevitable, primary function of the mainstream news outlets to create consensus, rather than division, around a core set of values that have evolved over the years, and which represent the status quo. You can’t broadcast everything, so from the start there’s inevitably a massive selection process. What guides the selection process? “Objectivity”? The very nature of the task logically excludes that possibility! What we actually end up seeing and hearing equally inevitably dominates our thinking. How can you think about what never reaches your senses? You can’t. And thus the status quo rolls effortlessly on.
Those of us who find ourselves uncomfortably outside the mainstream on the 9/11 issue believe that we see things “more objectively,” because, from our different perspective, we are acutely aware of the cherry-picking of “facts” that goes on in support of the Official Version. This cherry-picking is (for the most part) an entirely unconscious selection process. What we are probably less aware of is that we cherry-pick our “facts” too, and this selection is as glaring to the gatekeepers of acceptable knowledge as theirs is to us.
What this in turn betrays is our near-universal misunderstanding of what “facts” are and how we arrive at them. It is not that one group is more “objective” than another. That’s prideful, self-serving nonsense. We do not plug into an objective world that some see and others (for some reason) do not. It simply doesn’t work like that. Each person creates (as he must) his own reality from sensory data which he alone experiences, and then — with more or less vigor and conviction, and with whatever tools are currently fashionable — sets about convincing others to his point of view. This social component of reality is inescapable. Without it we would be living in something like the tower of Babel. Communication would not exist, and neither would society.
Insofar as humans are social beings, truth is a popularity contest (and, yes guys, we are social beings!). This conclusion seems like an outright denial of supposed scientific objectivity; but that is actually the way it is, and there’s no escaping it.
Thus it is that islands of popularity grow, like bacteria in a petri dish, around attractive beliefs, while those which cannot sustain interest wither and die. That, in a nutshell, is what the “factual” world is all about, always has been, and always will be. Facts are not hard and fast things “out there.” Facts are agreements, and like all agreements they can change.
In the BBC’s “The Conspiracy Files” architect Richard Gage, the founder and chief spokesman of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, asserts that the smoke observed on the south side of Building 7 before its sudden collapse was probably sucked there from Buildings 5 and 6. This theory of his is challenged by video evidence of fires burning on the same side, and other experts insisting that fires such as these could have “spread” and “engulfed” the building, destroying the integrity of the structural steel, and leading to “global collapse.”
The combined psychological force of the BBC, and the video footage, and the experts, and the even, reasonable tone of the commentator all pitted against bald Mr. Gage expostulating in his little office, is overwhelming. The unsurprising conclusion is reached by the Beeb that Building 7 collapsed without explosive assistance, as advertised. The gatekeepers are delighted, their worldview is vindicated, the enemy is brought low, and the status quo lumbers on, unshaken.
Facts? The merest suggestion of them is all that’s needed for those in authority (whatever authority that may be) to secure the hearts and minds of the faithful. “The Conspiracy Files” is the necessary force of social cohesion at work, operating through one of the organs which have evolved for this purpose. Strength resides in numbers. Might is right. To turn the tide requires tremendous perseverance, and the constant reintroduction of evidence which refutes the official version of events. This is subversion, and must be undertaken, of course, without the slightest help from where it counts — the mainstream media.
My own view (for what it’s worth) disagrees with that of Mr. Gage, as his naturally does with others. It is that it’s perfectly possible for the south face of Building 7 to have been blanketed in smoke without our jumping to the conclusion either that the smoke all came from elsewhere (Building 7 was on fire!), or that the six or seven windows (out of hundreds) on one floor (out of 47) at which fire could be seen were evidence that the building was about to collapse straight down at freefall speed into its own footprint. In fact this last assertion, seized on by the BBC and its chosen experts alike, strikes me as equally absurd after watching “The Conspiracy Files” as it did before. But then the BBC World News is not my authority, so I am free to question its selection of facts in a way which a gatekeeper to the official version is not.
Related articles
- New Poll Finds a Majority of Canadians Side with Ads Questioning 9/11 (rethink911.org)
- Still Trying to Talk To People About Building 7 (12160.info)
- New Poll Finds Most Americans Open to Alternative 9/11 Theories (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
Blackwater/Xe mercs arrive in Somalia, Al-Shabab says
Press TV – January 12, 2010 01:34:41 GMT
At least 18 people have been killed in clashes between rival factions in southern and central Somalia, and there are reports that Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have entered the country.
A battle broke out between the pro-government Ahlu Sunnah militia and Hizbul Islam fighters in the town of Baladwayne on Sunday and went well into Monday, during which at least 13 people lost their lives, witnesses said.
In addition, five people were killed when Hizbul Islam fighters engaged Al-Shabab fighters in the town of Dhobley near the Kenyan border, Reuters reported.
There are also allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in the capital.
The bombings will be carried out in order to create a pretext to launch a campaign against Al-Shabab, a spokesman of the group, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, told Reuters.
“We have discovered that US agencies are going to launch suicide bombings in public places in Mogadishu,” he told reporters. “They have tried it in Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan… We warn of these disasters. They want to target Bakara Market and mosques, then use that to malign us.”
At a meeting with tribal elders in Mogadishu on Monday, the Al-Shabab spokesman said that mercenaries of the Xe private security firm — formerly known as Blackwater — have arrived in the Somali capital, the Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu reported on Monday.
Blackwater/Xe mercenaries plan to carry out bombings in Mogadishu in order to accuse Al-Shabab of being the culprits in the attacks, the Al-Shabab spokesman added.
He went on to say that the Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have already recruited many lackeys to help them carry out bombings targeting prominent individuals and innocent civilians.
The Al-Shabab spokesman also told the tribal elders that a system based on Islam should be established in Somalia.
Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth?
By Paul Craig Roberts | January 7, 2010
What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.
If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.
After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.
The Underwear Bomb plot is being played to the hilt on the TV media and especially on Fox “news.” After reading recently that The Washington Post allowed a lobbyist to write a news story that preached the lobbyist’s interest, I wondered if the manufacturers of full body scanners were behind the heavy coverage of the Underwear Bomber, if not behind the plot itself. In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is gone with the wind.
Recently I read a column by an author who has a “convenience theory” about the Underwear Bomber being a Nigerian allegedly trained by al-Qaida in Yemen. As the U.S. is involved in an undeclared war in Yemen, about which neither the American public nor Congress were informed or consulted, the Underwear Bomb plot provided a convenient excuse for Washington’s new war, regardless of whether it was a real attack or a put-up job.
Once you start to ask yourself about whose agenda is served by events and their news spin, other things come to mind. For example, last July there was a news report that the government in Yemen had disbanded a terrorist cell, which was operating under the supervision of Israeli intelligence services. According to the news report, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Saba news agency that a terrorist cell was arrested and that the case was referred to judicial authorities “for its links with the Israeli intelligence services.”
Could the Underwear Bomber have been one of the Israeli terrorist recruits? Certainly Israel has an interest in keeping the US fully engaged militarily against all potential foes of Israel’s territorial expansion.
The thought brought back memory of my Russian studies at Oxford University where I learned that the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs so that they could blame those whom they wanted to arrest.
I next remembered that Francesco Cossiga, the president of Italy from 1985-1992, revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, a false flag operation under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The bombings were blamed on communists and were used to discredit communist parties in elections.
An Italian parliamentary investigation unearthed the fact that the attacks were overseen by the CIA. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated in sworn testimony that the attacks targeted innocent civilians, including women and children, in order “to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
What a coincidence. That is exactly what 9/11 succeeded in accomplishing in the U.S.
Among the well-meaning and the gullible in the West, the supposition still exists that government represents the public interest. Political parties keep this myth alive by fighting over which party best represents the public’s interest. In truth, government represents private interests, those of the office holders themselves and those of the lobby groups that finance their political campaigns. The public is in the dark as to the real agendas.
The U.S. and its puppet state allies were led to war in the Middle East and Afghanistan entirely on the basis of lies and deception. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not exist and were known by the U.S. and British governments not to exist. Forged documents, such as the “yellowcake documents,” were leaked to newspapers in order to create news reporting that would bring the public along with the government’s war agenda.
Now the same thing is happening in regard to the nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Forged documents leaked to The Times (London) that indicated Iran was developing a “nuclear trigger” mechanism have been revealed as forgeries.
Who benefits? Clearly, attacking Iran is on the Israeli-U.S. agenda, and someone is creating the “evidence” to support the case, just as the leaked secret “Downing Street Memo” to the British cabinet informed Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government that President Bush had already made the decision to invade Iraq and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
The willingness of people to believe their rulers and the propaganda ministries that serve the rulers is astonishing. Many Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program despite the unanimous conclusion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.
Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives fought hard with limited success to change the CIA’s role from intelligence agency to a political agency that manufactures facts in support of the neoconservative agenda. For the Bush Regime creating “new realities” was more important than knowing the facts.
Recently I read a proposal from a person purporting to favor an independent media that stated that we must save the print media from financial failure with government subsidies. Such a subsidy would complete the subservience of the media to government.Even in Stalinist Russia, a totalitarian political system where everyone knew that there was no free press, a gullible or intimidated public and Communist Party enabled Joseph Stalin to put the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution on show trial and execute them as capitalist spies.
In the U.S. we are developing our own show trials. Sheikh Mohammed’s will be a big one. As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, once government uses demonized Muslims to get the new justice (sic) system going, the rest of us will be next.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
US-Pakistan “diplomatic” dispute escalates
By Ein Katzenfreund | Aletho News | January 9, 2010
The neoconservative Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many other English-language media and even the Chinese news agency Xinhua just wrote in bold headlines that the US has asked Pakistan to stop “harassment” of their “diplomats”. It is quite uncommon that a country tries to escalate diplomatic differences with a friendly country over the mass media, rather than resolving it discreetly. Pakistan is an important “partner” for the United States in its struggle to dominate the Middle East, which it sells to the public as a global war on terror.
In the Wall Street Journal version and the associated Western media, the story of the diplomatic dispute is told somewhat like this: Pakistani authorities and security forces are harassing US diplomats in Pakistan by temporarily arresting them, searching their cars and systematically delaying visa requests. Due to this harassment the US now has difficulty implementing its five-year program to support civilian projects in Pakistan worth 1.5 billion US dollars annually. The Pakistani government demands direct payment so that it can spend the money where it is needed but the US doesn’t do this as it wants full administrative control. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the Pakistani intelligence service ISI is behind the harassment campaign and that the ISI is impeding peace and development in Pakistan. That’s what the story looks like in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The New York Times adds that the US embassy in Islamabad has plans to increase its staff to implement its assistance program in Pakistan from 500 to 800 people and casually states that President Zardari has demanded a cessation of air strikes by US drones on Pakistani territory, and instead proposes that the US give Pakistan the drone technology.
In Pakistan the story appears a bit different. First of all, it is carefully noted in Pakistan that the US hires death squads from the notorious Blackwater outfit as “diplomats”. The US government officially denies that it uses Blackwater for assassinations, but since it was announced that the suicide attack on the secret drone base in Afghanistan’s Khost killed two mercenaries from Blackwater the official claims have been exposed as a blatant lie.
However the troubles of the US in Pakistan are even more serious. Zahid Malik explained on December 7th in the Pakistan Observer in detail that the head of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, personally confronted the CIA boss Leon Panetta with evidence that the US backs warlords and terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of destabilizing Pakistan. The role Stanley McCrystal’s JSOC terrorist group plays in this dirty war is also public knowledge. None of this surprises Pakistanis as everyone in Pakistan knows that the US runs a secret war against Pakistan. This is becoming disastrous for the US because in the eyes of the Pakistani population the US is widely decried as a state sponsor of terrorism and any Pakistani government making common cause with the United States is considered to be treasonous.
The most important point is that the United States under Obama is trying to deceive Pakistan. The US promised to fight alongside Pakistan but they secretly fought against Pakistan and they were caught. It couldn’t be worse for the US. In this situation even the $1.5 billion annual bribe won’t help them out. If the US does not maintain the cooperation of Pakistani security services there will be no reliable transit of supplies for the U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan via Pakistan anymore. Pakistan can add to its demands whatever it wants whenever it wants, because the US is so dependent on the supply routes through Pakistan. Obama would like to increase US troops in Afghanistan by about 30 – 40,000 official soldiers. As for supply routes for his troops in Afghanistan he has the following possibilities: Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. As the US has no internal influence in Iran and Russia, these countries are not ideal options. The result is that if Pakistani supply routes are closed Obama’s occupation of Afghanistan will end and Pakistan wins influence. Until then Pakistan may ask what it wants of the US, and the US must pay whatever the price is. If the US is escalating its diplomatic dispute with Pakistan now in the media, that suggests that the US administration has just now realized what kind of an ugly trap they have fallen into in Afghanistan.
Was this really that hard to foresee? Honestly, who is stupid enough to choose to occupy Afghanistan? OK, the think tank IASPS proposed it, but they also called for war on Iraq for the reorganization of the Middle East in Israel’s favor. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama still follows this Zionist-designed war policy even though it brings nothing but predictable disaster for the US.
Iran’s Press TV is modest: it reported that five Americans were arrested because they used fake license plates, but that they were released later because the US embassy said that they were diplomats. Oh, but of course when US Marines raided the Algerian embassy in Baghdad it was something entirely different and in no way harassment or a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The author manages a German language news blog at – http://www.mein-parteibuch.com/
Obama Flubs His First Bay Of Pigs Moment As Terror Moles Escape Purge
Webster G. Tarpley
January 5, 2010
Washington DC , January 5, 2010 — Obama’s speech this afternoon was an incongruous performance. On the one hand, he angrily detailed a catastrophic breakdown in US intelligence procedures leading to the near-massacre of hundreds of airline passengers in the skies over Detroit on Christmas Day. On the other hand, there was no purge of the corrupt, complicit, and incompetent officials who had made this incident possible. No firings were announced. No heads rolled. The rogue network or invisible government of treasonous and subversive moles inside the US government which is behind the Detroit incident, and so many other incidents, remained untouched once again.
Wolffe on MSNBC: “Cock-Up Or Conspiracy?”
The expectation that Obama might actually do something to combat the rogue network across US government institutions which inflicts terrorism on the American people and the world had been raised the night before in an interview by Washington journalist Richard Wolffe on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC Countdown program. Wolffe, citing high-level White House officials, had reported that there was an investigation into whether the security lapses leading to the Detroit Christmas incident had been intentional and deliberate, and thus the products of conscious sabotage. Wolffe had stated: “It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda.The question there is again, cock up or conspiracy. Was there a reason these agencies were at war with each other that prevented that intelligence from being shared?” The goal, summarized Olbermann, was either a “turf war” or else the desire “to make somebody [Obama] look bad.” In reality, the goals involve a domestic police state and foreign geopolitical adventures.
Wolffe’s report had suggested that at least some firings were in the offing for officials responsible for the failure to stop Umar Farouk Mutallab from boarding his flight from Amsterdam to Detroit , despite the cascade of red flags associated with this particular patsy. But in his speech, Obama did not lay a glove on the invisible government forces which stage false flag terror incidents to manipulate public opinion and politics in the direction of increased totalitarianism at home and aggression abroad. Obama talked about what he would not tolerate, and about accountability in the abstract, but did not provide any concrete retribution to make moles think twice about future actions. Even David Gergen, the former White House official who faithfully represents the oligarchical point of view, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that he considered it virtually inconceivable for Obama to make such a speech without firing some failed officials.
The Bay Of Pigs, 1961 – A Distant Mirror For Obama
Obama’s situation offers certain parallels to the experience of John F. Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. Upon entering office, Kennedy had been convinced by Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell of the CIA to support an invasion of Cuba , which the CIA promised would lead immediately to an insurrection throughout the island and thus to the overthrow of Fidel Castro. Instead, the invasion was a catastrophic failure and humiliation for the United States and for Kennedy personally. When Kennedy came into office, he had been inclined to work closely with operatives like Allen Dulles and Bissell, who personified the rogue network in its then-current form. Helped along — according to some accounts — by General Douglas MacArthur, Kennedy realized that the geopolitical forces behind and above the presidency which were seeking to use him for their own ends were also more than willing to ruin him politically and to cast him aside as an expendable puppet at the first opportunity. Over time, this led to Kennedy’s deep and abiding mistrust of the rogue elements dominating the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and other elements of the US government — a mistrust which allowed Kennedy to resist the lunatic proposals for general war advanced by the rogue elements during the Cuban missile crisis. In the short run, Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs experience impelled him to fire Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, and CIA deputy director Charles Cabell within less than a year after the failed invasion. Obama needs to imitate Kennedy’s response, on the fast track.
Today, the breakdown crisis of the Anglo-American world system is far more acute than anything Kennedy had to face. Obama needs to muster something more than mere impotent rage about what is happening to himself. If Obama wants to avoid the disastrous outcomes for himself and the country which are now clearly delineated, he will need to mount an ambitious purge of subversive and treasonous moles inside the federal bureaucracy, along with the incompetents, time servers, and bunglers who are happy to play along with the rogues.
Who Obama Should Fire
Almost any of the twenty-odd officials who attended Obama’s special meeting in the White House today could be candidates for ouster for reasons of incompetence or worse. One obvious choice would be Michael E. Leiter, the head of the National Counter-Terrorism Center , which has the responsibility of integrating all the information from 16 agencies which was so obviously not integrated in the Mutallab case. Another might be Leiter’s boss Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence or intelligence czar created after 9/11. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is widely discredited, and has lost the confidence of the American people through her interviews if nothing else. Napolitano is also the keeper of the no-fly list, on which Mutallab needed to be listed, but was not. Hillary Clinton’s State Department failed to revoke Mutallab’s US entry visa after the Nigerian’s father warned the US Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s visit to Yemen — an outrageous lapse, or a deliberate sabotage. Leon Panetta’s CIA also had that information, and failed to make sure it was acted on. Gen. James Jones, the head of the National Security Council, is responsible for the overall coordination of the government, which in this case was substandard. FBI Director Robert Muller’s agents are up to their usual tricks of suppressing evidence in regard to the well-dressed Indian and the man in orange on the Detroit flight reported by an eyewitness, the Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell. (See http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_kurt_hask.html) Firing any of these failed or complicit officials would be a good start.
If Obama continues to punt on real accountability, the rogue network will conclude that he is indeed the weakling and pushover which French President Sarkozy and others have suspected him to be. In that case, the handwriting will be on the wall for new world catastrophes.
‘Flaws’ in key Lockerbie evidence
“I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that – it is unbelievable”
– UN European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt
BBC | January 6, 2010
An investigation by BBC’s Newsnight has cast doubts on the key piece of evidence which convicted the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Tests aimed at reproducing the blast appear to undermine the case’s central forensic link, based on a tiny fragment identified as part of a bomb timer.
The tests suggest the fragment, which linked the attack to Megrahi, would not have survived the mid-air explosion.
Two hundred and seventy people died in the 1988 attack on Pan Am flight 103.
Megrahi was jailed for the attack in 2001, but he was controversially released from prison in Scotland by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.
Megrahi is said to be dying from terminal cancer and, according to reports from Libya, his condition continues to deteriorate.
But his release also scuppered Megrahi’s planned appeal and any hopes of challenging the evidence on which he had been jailed.
Newsnight has been reviewing that evidence, and has exposed serious doubts about the forensics used to identify the fragment as being part of a trigger circuit board.
The fragment was found three weeks after the attack. For months it remained unnoticed and unremarked, but eventually it was to shape the entire investigation.
Malta link
The fragment was embedded in a charred piece of clothing, which was marked with a label saying it was made in Malta.
So the focus turned to Malta and the question of who had bought the clothes.
A shopkeeper on the island identified Megrahi, but this came only years later after he saw him pictured in a magazine as a Lockerbie suspect.
Newsnight has discovered that the fragment – crucial to the conviction – was never subjected to chemical analysis or swabbing to establish whether it had in fact been involved in any explosion.
And the UN’s European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt, has told Newsnight that there are further doubts over the whether the fragment could have come from the trigger of the Lockerbie bomb.
Obliterated
He has recreated the suitcase bomb which it is said destroyed Pan Am 103, using the type of radio in which the explosive and the timer circuit board were supposedly placed, and the same kind of clothes on which the fragment was found.
In each test the timer and its circuit board were obliterated, prompting Mr Wyatt to question whether such a fragment could have survived the mid-air explosion.
He told Newsnight: “I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that – it is unbelievable.
“We carried out 20 tests, we didn’t carry out 100 or 1,000, but in those 20 tests we found absolutely nothing at all – so I found it highly improbable that you would find anything like that, particularly at 10,000 feet when bits are dropping into long wet grass over hundreds of miles.
Background –
The Lockerbie Bombing Seen as an Expression of a “Strenuous Disagreement”
Related
Explosive reached Ireland after failed test
RTE News | January 5, 2010 20:50
A quantity of explosive, found in a flat on Dorset Street in Dublin this morning, was brought into the country following a failed security operation in Slovakia.
The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband planted by the authorities in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport in Slovakia last weekend as part of a test of security procedures.
Seven were detected by airport security, but the eighth – 90g of research development explosive or RDX – was put in the luggage of a Slovakian electrician who lives and works in Dublin.
The 49-year-old unwittingly brought the material to Dublin when he returned from Christmas holidays.
Gardaí were eventually alerted this morning following a call from police in Bratislava and the flat on Dorset Street was sealed off.
During the operation, the adjoining homes and businesses were evacuated as the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit removed the explosive for further analysis.
Both Gardiner Street and Lower Dorset street were closed off for about an hour.
The Slovakian man was arrested at the scene, but gardaí are now satisfied that he is innocent and he was released from custody this afternoon. He will not face charges.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the Slovakian Minister for the Interior has conveyed his Government’s profound regret for this incident to the Justice Minister Dermot Ahern.
Minister Ahern said he was very concerned about the fact that the gardaí were not alerted for three days and has asked for a full report.
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has appointed Detective Chief Superintendent Martin McLaughlin to establish the full background to this incident.
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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
Blog Roll
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- The Broken Contract
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- A pause, not a ceasefire: Washington stalls, Tehran recalibrates
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- If Americans Knew
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
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- Former Tik Tok official describes massive pressure from Israel lobby
- Amid ceasefire violations and genocide, Israel commits piracy – Daily Update
- Five Laws and Standards That Require the US Cut Off Weapons to Israel
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- The Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza — A cry at sea to the world’s dormant conscience
- Politico’s powerful parent company tells Politico they must support Israeli narrative
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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