9/11 Truth: War on Terror or “War on Democracy”? The Physical Intimidation of Legislatures
By Prof. Graeme McQueen | Truth and Shadows
Timely and incisive analysis, this is the text of a talk given by Prof. Graeme MacQueen at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, on November 18, 2015.
***
Good evening. I have two sets of introductory comments.
First, my aim tonight is not to prove each of my assertions with a wealth of evidence but to survey four cases briefly in order to reveal a pattern. If you feel I may be on to something it will be up to you to look at these cases in more detail.
Secondly, as a Canadian addressing other Canadians, I want to note that I am aware of the taboos this talk is violating. I will be making claims, and pointing out patterns, that are unwelcome in mainstream society today in Canada. The taboos are held in place with heavy silence and with ridicule, and they are, in my opinion, crucial to the maintenance of the “War on Terror”.
The taboos are strong in the media, the universities, and in all sectors of government. Since my theme today has to do with legislatures, and since we have just experienced a federal election in Canada, I will give two recent examples from the political arena.
Although the two examples concern the Liberal Party, I am not implying this party is alone in its observance of this taboo. As far as I can discover the taboo is found in all of Canada’s major political parties.
While the election campaign was in full swing there was much searching through the records of all candidates (their social media records, for example) by opposing parties for material that could be used to discredit them. It turned out that two Liberal candidates had at one point in the past expressed skepticism about the official account of 9/11. The discovery of this material immediately created a crisis. Both candidates quickly made formal public statements:
(a) “I want to be extremely clear. I do not question any aspects of what occurred during the tragic events on September 11th, 2001. Let there be no doubt about it.”
Maria Manna, Liberal candidate in British Columbia
(b) “Let’s be crystal clear: I have never and do not question the events which took place on Sept. 11, 2001.”
David Graham, Liberal candidate in Quebec
These are peculiar statements. They do not seem to have been written independently and they verge on the incomprehensible. What, after all, does it mean to say you do not question an event? The verb “question” would normally mean in such a context “to doubt.” But how can we doubt an event?
An event is what it is. Perhaps the writer of these statements is using the verb to mean, “to have questions about.” But surely the candidates are not bragging that they have no questions about the events of that day? Over one-third of Canadians and Americans, as revealed by numerous polls, have serious questions about the events of the day. Why would their representatives have no questions? How could it be a virtue to have no questions? Have the candidates studied these events deeply and resolved all questions? Even the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which produced the most detailed official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, has admitted that it has been left with questions about these collapses. Perhaps Ms. Manna and Mr. Graham should explain to NIST how they have resolved all the confusions?
Or do these candidates mean they do not have any doubts about the official account of the events of 9/11? This would be a different statement altogether. And in this case, which account are they actually referring to? The Canadian government has no independent account of what happened on that day. A citizen’s petition for an independent investigation was rejected with contempt by Steven Blaney, the Minister of Public Safety under the Conservative government. So, is it the U.S. government’s account that the candidates are affirming? This account, to the extent that there is a single account, is the ultimate responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was charged with investigating the crime. But do Ms. Manna and Mr. Graham even know what the FBI’s position is? Do they know, for example, that the FBI never even charged Osama bin Laden with the crimes of 9/11 because they had insufficient evidence? Do they know that the 9/11 Commission, tasked with writing a public report on the events of 9/11, made extensive use of the weakest of claims—claims made under torture?
Frankly, I do not think these candidates’ assertions have anything to do with evidence or reason. I believe they are best understood as loyalty oaths. I think they mean something like this:
“As far as this founding event in the War on Terror is concerned, we promise to accept as true, without investigation or critical inquiry, whatever Canadian authorities accept as true. If Canadian authorities, without conducting an investigation, have faith in statements made under torture and in unsupported claims made by a foreign intelligence agency, then we will share that faith.”
These loyalty oaths suggest that anyone who raises questions about the claims made by this foreign intelligence agency, and supported by acts that violate international law, will be excluded from the Canadian Parliament. Such people will not be permitted to represent the Canadian people or to help steer this country into the future. What a staggering notion.
The loyalty oaths I have been discussing serve well to introduce today’s talk because my theme is the bullying of legislatures in North America. But I wish to go beyond the sort of bullying indicated in loyalty oaths. I want to look at an even more gross form of bullying, the use of physical threat.
My basic claim is simple: physical intimidation of elected representatives, as suggested in the four instances I will discuss, is a core feature of the War on Terror. And this is a direct attack on representative democracy.
Intimidating the U.S. Congress in the fall of 2001
A. The 9/11 Events:
I begin with the attacks of September 11, 2001, crucial to the War on Terror.
Most of you remember these events and are aware of how shocking they were to the general population in North America. But perhaps you do not all recall the nature of the shock delivered to Congress.
Democrat Tom Daschle, who was Senate Majority Leader on September 11, 2001, recalls being at the Capitol with other members of Congress when the assaults on the Twin Towers took place. He watched them on television like most Americans, as stunned and puzzled as anyone. But his television viewing was interrupted when a guard ran into the room and announced that there was a plane headed toward the Capitol and that an immediate evacuation of the building was necessary. This was, says Daschle, the first time in history the entire U.S. Capitol had been evacuated. There appears to have been no clear protocol. Daschle says it was a scene of “total chaos.” Elected representatives, both senators and members of the House, fled in confusion. Many had difficulty getting reliable information about what was happening and did not know what to do or where to go. This was a frightened and intimidated legislature.
Later in the day, when things in Washington had settled down somewhat, many of those who had fled reassembled on the steps of the Capitol building. A few brief speeches were made, after which, as we can see and hear in precious video footage, members of Congress broke into a singing of God Bless America, followed by emotional embraces.
A powerful feeling of unity is evident in the record of this event. Tom Daschle said that he had never in his life experienced the sense of unity he felt on September 11, 2001. Like others on the steps of the Capitol that evening, he seems to have been almost euphoric. We were, he says, one family.
I draw your attention to the emergence of a pattern that is common in societies experiencing danger and that characterizes affected populations in the War on Terror.
First, there is the sense of threat. The population then goes through a phase of intense, felt unity.
Party loyalties and ideological divides are cast aside. There are solemn declarations, there is singing, there is the calling down of blessings on the nation, there is hugging and there are tears.
I am not mocking members of Congress, or any other group that unites under threat. This seems to be an aspect of our nature as human beings. But bear in mind that while these social adjustments may help a society gear up for a response to an attack, they can also leave a population vulnerable to manipulation. At such moments dissent is discouraged and critical thinking is in short supply. Passion and calls for loyalty are the order of the day.
The consequences can be very serious.
A photograph of George W. Bush and Tom Daschle, top Republican and top Democrat, embracing shortly after 9/11, tells the story. The act is a symbolic statement of unity, but like many symbolic statements it tells us a tale with very practical implications.
The U.S. Constitution gives to Congress the power to declare war. Aware of the desirability of involving Congress, the White House immediately took advantage of the shock delivered by 9/11 and asked Congress for a bill explicitly allowing the President to use armed force in response to the attacks. Tom Daschle was one of the few people who could have stopped such a bill. The Democrats had a majority in Senate and he, as Senate Majority Leader, could have urged them to vote as a bloc against the bill. But the hug indicates, the sense of being one family, the feeling of unity, was strong. Not only did Daschle not rise to the occasion and oppose such a bill, he immediately offered to put it forward, thus guaranteeing its acceptance.
This extremely dangerous legislation, “Authorization for Use of Military Force, 2001” was proposed to and passed by both House and Senate on September 14, 2001. There was only one vote against the bill—by Barbara Lee, later Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. The bill provided cover for the immediate invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and simultaneous preparations for the invasion of Iraq. It also handed to Bush the power to decide who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Remember: people who want war may purposely create a sense of threat and a feeling of unity. And they will typically do so in order to achieve a particular reaction. This is the triad I am drawing your attention to: Threat, Unity, Reaction.
The reaction may express itself outwardly in foreign policy or inwardly in domestic policy. Frequently, the outward and inward moves are simultaneous. Outwardly, the enraged nation throws itself on the nation or group it decides was responsible for the attack. Inwardly, the population agrees that this is a time for unity, not a time for debate and dissent but for gathering as one people, with the surrender of individual freedoms and civil rights as needed to mobilize for violence.
We do not need to speculate about whether this condition was achieved in the American people on 9/11. A poll was initiated on that very day, in the evening of 9/11. (Washington Post-ABC). According to those who conducted the poll, nearly nine in ten Americans supported military action against whoever was responsible for the attacks and two out of three Americans were willing to surrender civil liberties to fight terrorism.
Now, you may be thinking, what’s the big deal? The threat-unity-response triad makes sense: an attacked group unites and, when united, acts to deal with a serious threat. The triad is compatible with the official story of 9/11 and does not by itself mean that dissenters are right and that the day’s events were an inside operation.
You would be right in thinking that I have said nothing to this point that indicates the official story of 9/11 is false. My preliminary aim has been simply to point to the triad, which becomes visible again and again in the War on Terror—and to emphasize how populations and their elected representatives may, at such times, be vulnerable to manipulation.
Now, if we wish to go further and ask if 9/11 was a fraud we will need to look at the evidence. This is not difficult: fourteen years of research by a wide variety of people has given us plenty of evidence. In today’s talk, however, I am discussing four events, and I have little time to discuss details of 9/11. So let me restrict myself to a few brief comments.
Many of you will know, if you have looked into this issue even superficially, that the destruction of the World Trade Center, and especially of three buildings (WTC 1, 2 and 7), is regarded by many of us as providing the strongest evidence against the official account. I realize that many people “tune out” when building collapses are discussed (inner voice: “What do I know about buildings? My God, I hope they aren’t going to ask me to remember my high school physics!”). But there are very good reasons to pay attention to the destruction of these buildings.
Covert operations are typically characterized not only by lying, but by the laying down of false trails and the creation of pseudo-mysteries and diversion. So complex and contradictory is the evidence encountered that it is very often difficult to prove an event was based on deception even when we feel sure this is the case. When we do get such proof it makes sense to try to persuade people to look at it. The destruction of the WTC buildings is one such instance. In my view the official explanations of their destruction have been proven to be false. If you wish to read an admirable summary of the evidence against the official account of the WTC destruction, I refer you to a recent publication that can be obtained from the website of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. It is entitled, Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7.
As this publication makes clear, the official account of the destruction of these buildings is based on repeated violations of the laws of physics and of basic principles of scientific investigation and thought. In contrast, the hypothesis that the three buildings were brought down by planted explosives and other agents of destruction is robustly supported. Evidence against the official account and in favor of the dissident account is copious, varied, and mutually corroborating.
But if these three buildings were brought down not by plane strikes but by controlled demolition, through preparations made well before the attacks, this means that the entire official narrative is false and the founding event in the War on Terror is a fraud. Moreover, since discovering that the official account is false is not actually difficult, we must assume that the U.S. government agencies that promote the fraudulent event, including the FBI, are aware of the fraud and have been engaged in a major cover-up. They are, at the very least, accessories after the fact.
Let me sum up my observations and claims to this point:
- Observation: there is a taboo in place in Canada (as in the U.S.) that punishes people, including members of Parliament, who raise questions about the FBI account of 9/11.
- Observation: a familiar pattern of human history becomes clear to those who study the 9/11 event: threat leads to feelings of unity, and feelings of unity facilitate and shape the reaction: (a) the sacrifice civil rights at home and (b) a willingness to use force against a perceived enemy.
- Observation: In the case of the 9/11 event in the U.S. the reaction phase encouraged (a) a willingness at home to surrender traditional rights and freedoms and (b) a willingness to use military force abroad.
- Claim: the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by Islamic extremists but were managed from within the U.S. to manipulate the population and to intimidate the U.S. Congress into supporting the reaction desired by the perpetrators.
B. The 2001 Anthrax attacks:
Very shortly after the 9/11 attacks there was a second set of attacks in the U.S. Envelopes containing deadly anthrax spores were sent through the mail.
This set of attacks appeared at the time to be the second punch in a one-two punch attack. After all, the attacks began a mere week after 9/11 and the perpetrators clearly wanted to be seen as the same Muslim extremists who had carried out the first attack.
Here, for example, is the letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle:
Note the date, 9/11, at the top. Note the attempt to look like a Muslim extremist. Most of the U.S. population assumed this was, indeed, a second blow by the same Muslim extremists alleged to have carried out the 9/11 attacks. We know this from a poll carried out in mid-October, 2001.
What were the effects of the anthrax attacks and who was the perpetrator?
The main effect was to keep up the momentum established by the 9/11 attacks. The external aspect of the reaction to 9/11 was directed toward those thought responsible: this reaction supported the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The first bombs were dropped on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, two days after the first death in the U.S. from anthrax. The anthrax attacks kept al-Qaeda and Afghanistan in the crosshairs.
And as October of 2001 progressed another possible perpetrator appeared on the scene. According to this hypothesis al-Qaeda was providing the foot-soldiers—the people who wrote the letters and mailed them—but the sophisticated anthrax spores had to have been produced by a state, which was collaborating with al-Qaeda in this deadly attack.
The enemy state was said to be Iraq.
The Iraq hypothesis flourished briefly in October and November of 2001 in partnership with the al-Qaeda hypothesis. During that period, as the invasion of Afghanistan proceeded, support was given to preparations for the invasion of Iraq.
But I spoke earlier of a pattern, and the pattern includes not only attack on enemy states but also sacrifice of civil rights at home. Here is where the anthrax attacks scored their biggest victory. Attorney General John Ashcroft had introduced what would later be called the Patriot Act shortly after 9/11 and had made it clear to Congress that he wanted it passed immediately. But there was resistance. Both the population at large and Congress began to recover from the 9/11 attacks, and as they did so their willingness to sacrifice civil rights began to diminish. The anthrax attacks saved the day for Ashcroft by ensuring that both population and Congress remained sufficiently intimidated to accept the Patriot act. The act was passed on October 26, 2001. The connection between its passage and the anthrax attacks is very clear.
There were two powerful Democratic senators whose actions were slowing down passage of the Patriot Act. One was Tom Daschle, whom I have mentioned previously. The second was Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Anthrax letters were sent out to Daschle and Leahy immediately after they resisted a deadline for passage of the bill proposed by Vice-President Dick Cheney.
How odd that al-Qaeda and Iraq would have had a special hatred of Democratic senators who slowed down the Patriot Act!
But, of course, the anthrax letters were not sent by al-Qaeda and Iraq. According to what we have since learned, no Muslim had anything whatsoever to do with the attacks.
If you want to know more about this topic, please read my book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception. Since the publication of that book there have been further developments, including the emergence of a highly placed FBI whistle-blower, that have supported the book’s claims.
What do we know about the perpetrators? Studies of the physical characteristics of the anthrax spores quickly ruled out al-Qaeda and Iraq as sources of these spores and showed that the anthrax came from a highly secure laboratory within the U.S. military-industrial complex. This is not controversial, having been acknowledged by the FBI, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
So the perpetrators were not Muslim extremists but they pretended to be, and whoever they were they had access to the heart of the U.S. intelligence and military community. It is, therefore, clear that the anthrax attacks were an “inside job” and a “false flag operation.”
The true perpetrators are still at large, the FBI having led the public on a multi-year wild goose chase.
As far as the intimidation of Congress is concerned, the process started with 9/11 but was continued by means of the anthrax attacks. Concrete barricades and yellow crime scene tape marked off the Capitol. Congress members were told by the FBI not to wear their Congressional pins publicly or to use their Congressional license plates. They were told they must hide their identities as elected representatives.
When Tom Daschle’s office received an anthrax letter in mid-October the stuff was so sophisticated it contaminated the whole building. The Hart Senate building was closed down for several months while it was cleaned. Some senators remained without computer access and proper office space as the Patriot Act was being pushed through. The anthrax attacks ensured that the passage of the Patriot Act took place in an atmosphere of urgent and ongoing threat to Congress.
Now, note that the lies pushed in October-November of 2001 to frame Afghanistan and Iraq for the anthrax attacks (Iraq as sponsor, al-Qaeda as client) belonged to the same repository of lies that was used over a period of years to justify the 2003 attack on Iraq. The two main deceptions were (a) that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and (b) that Iraq was a sponsor of al-Qaeda.
The Centre for Public Integrity in the U.S. did a study a few years ago of these two sets of false statements. The study found that during the two years following 9/11 top Bush officials made 935 false statements on these two topics.
When Colin Powell gave his deceptive performance before the UN Security Council just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, holding up his little vial of simulated anthrax, he was still making these two sets of false statements and he was still warning the world that Iraq might attack the U.S. with anthrax.
Intimidating Canadian legislatures, 2013-14
I now turn to a different country and to a time nearer the present. I have two incidents in Canada to discuss, the first situated in 2013 and the second in 2014.
A. The Provincial Legislature of British Columbia:
In 2013 Canadians learned that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had arrested two Muslims for attempting to set off three bombs on the grounds of the British Columbia legislature on Canada Day, July 1.
This event seemed to have confirmed dramatically the fears on which the War on Terror feeds: Islamic terrorism, as a threat to democracy both symbolic and real, is alive and well in North America.
But let us look more closely at the perpetrators.
The couple arrested, John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, had allegedly self-converted to Islam in 2011. According to Ian Mulgrew, journalist for the Vancouver Sun who attended the lengthy trial, “These new Muslim converts ‘discovered’ Islam in a Lower Mainland camouflage store while on a walkabout in an alcoholic haze.” Nuttall and Korody were not members of a Muslim community; in fact, we have been told that when they began talking about the need for jihad members of the B.C. Muslim community promptly reported them to police.
Mulgrew has described Nuttall and Korody as “impoverished, troubled drug addicts.”
After they were brought to the attention of police Nuttall and Korody “were befriended by an [RCMP] officer pretending to be an Arab businessman with extremist connections. Over the following months, he encouraged their Islamic militance and introduced them to other Mounties acting as jihadis.” Mulgrew refers to this exercise as a “stage-managed operation.” More than 240 members of the RCMP were involved in this exercise.
“Over the following months, the [RCMP] corporal [posing as their Muslim friend] encouraged their extremism, bought Nuttall a suit…paid him for meaningless jobs, gave him money for groceries, all the while pressing him to formulate a viable terrorist plot.”
On the audiotapes of police interactions with Nuttall, the RCMP mole can at one point be heard berating Nuttall for his “poorly researched plan to hijack a Via Rail passenger train in Victoria that no longer exists.” (The remarks are by Canadian Press journalist Geordon Omand.)
The evidence consistently suggests that Nuttall had been indulging in fantasies. His plans were not rooted in the real world. What was the RCMP response on learning this? On the undercover audiotapes the police mole, after criticizing him for his poor research, can be heard saying to Nuttall: “I’m here to make what you have in your head come true.”
In other words, people cannot be arrested in Canada for having violent fantasies, but the RCMP is permitted to turn these fantasies into reality so that an arrest can be made and the victim fed to the ever-hungry War on Terror.
Each of us may have our moment of special anger as we read the records of this case. My moment came when I read about Nuttall having an awakening of conscience in the weeks before the planting of the bombs.
“Until a couple of days ago, I didn’t clue in that people were going to die. I’ve never killed anybody. I’m not a murderer.”
At another point Nuttall says clearly that he needs spiritual counseling.
“I want to know in my heart that I did the right thing—I need some spiritual guidance.”
The RCMP mole, anxious to discourage these signs of an awakening of conscience, replies: “What’s this spiritual guidance going to give you?”
Nuttall says: “This is about my soul were talking about, my wife’s soul.”
“All of us,” intones the costumed RCMP officer, “we have our own destiny… Allah chooses it for us, we don’t choose it for ourselves.”
Here is the essence of entrapment. A citizen shows clear signs of being ready to back away from a not yet committed crime but the police, instead of encouraging this tendency, work to beguile, seduce, and trap the citizen into the commission of this crime.
But there was more. A frightening little videotape was found in which Nuttall and Korody, with faces hidden, exhorted people to carry out jihad and expressed inclinations toward martyrdom.
But who urged the couple to make the video? Who helped at every stage in its creation? Who filmed it? Who even supplied the black banner used as a backdrop? Why, the RCMP. The film was an RCMP production.
Neither the entrapment of this couple, nor even the assistance in making a martyrdom video, involves creativity on the part of the RCMP. Canada’s federal police have for some years been aping the FBI, which has a long record of such operations and has made them central to the War on Terror. Those of you who wish to look into this should read Trevor Aaronson’s book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. If you do not have time to read the book, please watch Aaronson’s TED talk on the internet.
In the end, RCMP operatives convinced Nuttall to concentrate on a practical weapon, something he might actually be able to manage. They suggested he build pressure-cooker bombs and gave him advice on how to do it. They assured him they would supply the required explosive substance—to which he had no access.
Then they drove Nuttall around Victoria and found him a nice place to put the bombs—behind the bushes on the grounds of the B.C. legislature.
This case is so outrageous that even mainstream media have carried angry criticism of the RCMP. Journalist Ian Mulgrew has said: “this operation is redolent of a make-work project by the Mounties and the federal justice department to bolster the rhetoric of the prime minister.”
Consider Mulgrew’s statement. Let us give credit where credit is due: he is a mainstream Canadian journalist with the courage to say that the RCMP’s actions in this operation are not real policing at all (he calls them “pretend policing”) but a political act constructed to support the Conservative government’s involvement in the War on Terror. Everything I have seen about the case supports this claim.
The fact is that in Canada today, as in the U.S., federal police and intelligence agencies have politicized both policing and the courts. They have corrupted both sets of institutions. In doing so they are driven by, and in turn are supporting, an aggressive global conflict framework, the War on Terror, that is based on lies and deception.
And let me remind you of one aspect of the 2013 stage production that is often neglected. It involved the Canadian federal police encouraging a threat to a Canadian legislature.
B. The Parliament of Canada:
And now we arrive at the fourth and last case from the annals of the War on Terror to be reviewed today. This is the invasion of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa on October 22, 2014.
Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette has recalled her experience in her Senate office:
At 2:30 p.m., to cries of “Police,” my assistant opens the office’s main door. He comes face to face with soldiers aiming their machine guns at him and ordering him to put his hands in the air. One by one, our doors are opened and the soldiers point their guns at my other assistants who exit their offices, hands in the air, as if they were criminals… The door we go through is destroyed; glass has exploded all over the floor. The door across the hallway has also been knocked in. Glass litters the hallway. There are more than 50 people crammed into four offices, everyone talking to one another…
I sit near the open window. I’m breathing but stunned: parliamentarians are under the command of the military. Parliament is in the hands of the armed forces.
The persons holding the automatic weapons were almost certainly federal police officers, not members of the armed forces, but for our purposes today the distinction may not be important. Men in camouflage clothing with heavy boots, helmets, and automatic weapons would have been hard for most Canadians to identify. Let us simply say that security forces took control of Parliament. The image fits the theme of this talk very well.
But you are thinking: naturally they took control—an armed gunman was running down the hall shooting!
Yes, but let us look a bit more closely at the affair.
I want to begin by saying I do not pretend to have sorted out the facts of this attack. I am not in a position to say with confidence that the RCMP were complicit. But, in a report I have written on this incident, The October 22, 2014, Ottawa Shooting: Why Canadians Need a Public Inquiry, I do claim that (a) there are very serious unanswered questions about this series of incidents (I list 32 questions), (b) the RCMP have given both misleading and false information to the public and (c) in any serious inquiry the possibility of RCMP complicity would have to be considered.
The RCMP are, of course, the ones in charge of the investigation of the October 22, 2014 events. But this simply illustrates the dilemma faced by citizens in North America. The agencies charged with investigating acts of alleged Islamic terrorism have a proven record of incitement, entrapment and framing. They would, for this reason, be treated as suspects within an uncorrupted system of policing and litigation.
When we look for recognition of this obvious truth in mainstream North America media today we will seldom find it. I saw not a single person interviewed on television or radio, or quoted in mainstream newspapers, in Canada in the days after the October 22, 2014 attacks, who was willing to raise this as a serious possibility.
Drawing on the 2013 Canada Day case, we might ask our question this way: Could the 2014 impoverished drug addict from Vancouver (Zehaf-Bibeau) have been assisted by the RCMP the way the 2013 impoverished drug addict from Vancouver (Nuttall) was assisted? Could the two acts of intimidation of the people’s elected representatives have belonged to the same pattern of police behavior?
Before entering into the critical questioning of the mainstream account of October 22, I draw attention to the triad we have seen before: Threat, Unity, Reaction.
Let us begin with threat. After allegedly shooting Corporal Cirillo at the War Memorial the suspect, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, made it to the Centre Block of Parliament. The Conservative caucus, including Mr. Harper, was assembled behind a door on one side of the central Hall of Honour, while the New Democratic Party was assembled behind a door on the other side. To the astonishment and horror of the MPs, a barrage of shooting broke out in the Hall.
Globe and Mail reporter Josh Wingrove caught the gunfire (second volley) on his Blackberry, and the showing of this video footage gave the public a dramatic sense of what MPs, hunkered down behind poorly barricaded doors off the main hall, heard at that time.
Volley one, which had occurred prior to the volley caught on this video, had roughly the same number of shots as volley two.
So MPs certainly felt threatened. The danger was emphasized by the CBC, which said on October 22 that the perpetrator may have fired 30 shots in the Hall of Honour. John Baird, then the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said on Anderson Cooper’s TV show on October 23 that if Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers had not killed Zehaf-Bibeau a dozen people might have been killed.
It turned out these statements were based on fantasy. The evidence we now have suggests that the suspect, Zehaf-Bibeau, ran into Centre Block with two bullets in his rifle. His firearm was a lever-action hunting rifle—a model first produced in 1894. Zehaf-Bibeau’s goals at that point are not clear, but he fired his two bullets, hitting no one (security guard Samearn Son appears to have been hit in the leg by a ricochet) and at one point he declined to shoot a security guard he was facing at point blank range. In the space between volleys he seems to have loaded one more bullet in his rifle, which he fired—again hitting no one—just before dying in a hail of bullets less than two minutes after entering the building. He did not, therefore, shoot 30 times; he shot three times. And he was in no position to kill a dozen people. Of the roughly 59 shots heard by MPs, 56 were fired by police with semi-automatic 9mm handguns.
While it is important to sort out these facts, it remains true that the feeling of threat experienced by MPs was intense. They heard a huge barrage of shots, could not see what was going on, and felt at risk.
How about the next member of our triad, unity?
We have a remarkable piece of footage from the next day, October 23, fully as striking as the singing of God Bless America on the steps of the Capitol. Kevin Vickers, apparently one of the two men who killed Zehaf-Bibeau, was Sergeant-at-Arms and regularly carried the mace into Parliament. (The mace represents the authority of the Speaker and the right of the House, transmitted to it by the crown, to pass laws.) When Mr. Vickers entered Parliament with the mace on October 23 he was given a prolonged standing ovation by the House, with members of all political parties enthusiastically participating.
In addition to this particular symbolic statement of unity we saw in Canada the embraces familiar to us from the U.S. incidents of the fall of 2001. The Canadian Prime Minister signaled his trans-party solidarity with Mr. Trudeau of the Liberal Party and Mr. Mulcair of the NDP with hugs.
So we had threat and we had unity. The third element is reaction, which possesses two components. Internally, citizens and their representatives are all supposed to pull together, sacrificing civil rights or having them sacrificed on their behalf. Externally, they are to fling themselves at the enemy—whoever has been assigned that role.
In Prime Minister Harper’s speech on October 22 he made clear, albeit in genteel and delicate language, that he intended to move ahead on both fronts: to give more power to national security agencies at home while joining with allies in military action abroad.
This week’s events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world…this will lead us to strengthen our resolve and redouble our efforts and those of our national security agencies to take all necessary steps to identify and counter threats and keep Canada safe here at home, just as it will lead us to strengthen our resolve and redouble our efforts to work with our allies around the world and fight against the terrorist organizations who brutalize those in other countries with the hope of bringing their savagery to our shores. They will have no safe haven.
The forms this reaction took are well known. Internally we had the passage of a series of bills, including the famous Bill C-51. Externally, we found the victim of the War Memorial shooting, Corporal Cirillo, quickly exploited in Iraq.
So we have the triad found in the War on Terror in its autumn, 2001 manifestation. The presence of death in the October 22 events has guaranteed that the pattern will be deeply inscribed in people’s consciousness. The absence of killing in the B.C. bombers incident is, I am convinced, one of the reasons the incident has had relatively little impact in Canada. In fact, the lengthy court case associated with this incident—still not resolved as this talk is being given—has embarrassed the RCMP at the same time the lack of casualties has left the Canadian population uninterested. The operation cannot be called a success.
Would it not be tempting for police, after such a failure, to mount an operation in which there are deaths to draw people’s attention and where the perpetrator or patsy is killed in the operation so that there will never be a court case?
I am aware that I have to this point offered no evidence that the October 22, 2014 incident was planned or carried out with police complicity. Let me now, therefore, look at selected aspects of the RCMP’s performance and foreknowledge. In my view these are sufficiently peculiar, even if they were the only anomalies encountered, to justify a public inquiry. For other problematic issues in the case my report may be consulted.
I begin with a question: Where did the most blatant security failure occur, which allowed the suspect to make it into a building of Parliament after shooting Mr. Cirillo at the War Memorial? The answer is that the main security failure occurred between the time he emerged from his car in front of the bollards near East Block until the time he entered the doors of Centre Block. This zone was the responsibility of the RCMP. As he stepped onto Parliament Hill he was no longer the responsibility of the Ottawa police, and as he entered Centre Block he became the responsibility of House of Commons security. In between the RCMP was responsible.
Now, during that brief period when he was the responsibility of the RCMP he ran from the bollards along the grass in front of the East Block, his keffiya over the lower part of his face, his long hair flowing, and his Winchester rifle in his hands. He hijacked a black ministerial car in front of East Block. The driver got out and ran away at top speed. The suspect then got into the black car with his rifle and drove straight to Centre Block. On his way he passed two white RCMP vehicles. Neither moved to intercept him, although either one could have done so. Neither seems to have made a serious effort to catch him or intercept him on the rest of his journey to Centre Block, although they followed him to his destination.
I am not interested in blaming the officers in these two cars. The more important issue is the fact that the RCMP has such a thin and permeable line of security, not to mention a communications system that performed very badly. Two cars between the suspect and Parliament, each with one officer, neither of whom seemed to expect anything and neither of whom appeared to have heard the 911 calls from the War Memorial? Neither of whom appears to have been able to warn the House of Commons security, who were, therefore, caught off guard when Zehaf-Bibeau burst through the door?
We now know, thanks to a CBC access to information request, that the RCMP were short by at least 29 persons in their Parliament Hill security at that time. We also know that the extra patrols in the vicinity that the RCMP had mounted in mid-October due to various incidents had been halted two days before the October 22 incident.
Am I being a Monday morning quarterback? Will you object that it is all very well to bemoan this reduction of security in retrospect but that the RCMP could not possibly have known of the danger at the time? Well, I certainly would have thought that the killing of a soldier at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu two days earlier by an apparent “terrorist” would have led to some tightening of security. But, beyond that, there were plenty of signs of danger.
We are now touching on one of the most explosive aspects of the October 22, 2014 case, namely advance warnings. If we turn to the RCMP and ask what was the stated and official position we find it set out very clearly. Commissioner Paulson said without hesitation that there had been “no advance warning.” Is this true? Consider the following list:
(1) October 8, 2014
Warning: potential “knife and gun” attacks inside Canada.
Source: NBC News, crediting US intelligence sources, in turn crediting Canadian authorities. The warning was quickly denied by Canadian authorities.
(2) October 17:
Warning: “heightened state of alert”
Source: Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), which is housed at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) but has several partner organizations, including the RCMP.
(3) October 17:
Warning: “violent act of terrorism”
Source: Privy Council Office (PCO), which advises the Prime Minister.
(4) October 18:
Warning: ISIS considering attacks on uniformed law enforcement persons in Canada
Source: Criminal Intelligence Integrated Unit of the RCMP
(5) October 21:
Warning: [We do not know what is in this report, which the RCMP has refused to release, but it was apparently based on more than the lethal October 20 event in Quebec.]
Source: National Intelligence Coordination Centre, RCMP
(6) September to October, 2014, beginning about a month before the October 22 events
Warning: There was a war-gaming of “an attack in Quebec followed by an attack in another city” (CBC journalist Adrienne Arsenault called it the “precise scenario” that unfolded in October).
Source: Adrienne Arsenault, speaking on The National, CBC television, October 22, 2014. According to her the participants in the war game included CSIS, the RCMP, and the National Security Task Force.
We find, in short, that there were repeated warnings beginning at least a month before October 22 and growing more intense in the five days prior to the attacks. Such warnings are not at all normal in Canada. ITAC’s last similar warning had been issued about four years previously. As to the precision in timing of the warnings, Craig James, an official at the B.C. legislature, said that his office had been told “there may be a problem this week.” How extraordinary. There was, indeed, a problem “this week:” there was a lethal attack on the Monday (October 20) followed by a lethal attack on the Wednesday (October 22).
But the words of Craig James raise another issue: it is not merely the timing that is peculiar but also the institutions warned. With warnings going out to legislatures in Canada, how could the most important legislature at all have been left with no warning? As journalist Michael Smyth of The Province put it: “our provincial politicians [in B.C.] and legislative security staff were well-briefed by the feds here, but the RCMP in Ottawa got taken by surprise? What is wrong with this picture?”
What is more, consider the peculiarity in the October NBC warning. “Knife and gun” attacks inside Canada? Such attacks are very uncommon. Yet both on October 20 and October 22 large knives were found at the crime scene. Is this a coincidence?
Finally, we have the war-games exercise, which was found to be oddly prophetic when an attack in the province of Quebec (October 20) was followed by an attack in a second city (Ottawa, Ontario). It is true that part of the war-game scenario mentioned by Arsenault (a third incident with returnees from Syria) did not manifest itself, but there were certainly efforts, which involved RCMP lies, to tie both October suspects to Syria.
So, what are we to think of Mr. Paulson’s statement about “no advance warning?” Mr. Paulson was lying. Why? There are two main possibilities.
First, he may have been lying to disguise gross RCMP incompetence. To suggest this is to stay within the bounds of acceptable discourse, although even in this case there should be calls for Mr. Paulson’s resignation.
But how does the incompetence theory fit with the fact that the although the PCO document of October 17 explicitly called for maintaining patrols, the RCMP, after the issuing of the PCO document, actually halted a series of patrols they had been making in the vicinity of Parliament Hill? And why would the RCMP, after receiving a series of clear warnings, allow themselves to remain short-staffed on the scene to the tune of at least 29 officers? Moreover, since the PCO warning explicitly called for maintaining excellent communications, how is it that the RCMP neither received nor passed on, in a timely way, effective warnings that would have prevented the suspect’s assault on Centre Block?
The unspeakable possibility—the possibility that is outside the bounds of respectability and will not be mentioned by mainstream media and political representatives–is that Mr. Paulson denied receiving warnings of the attacks because the RCMP were complicit in the attacks.
It is not wise to pretend we know the truth about an incident when we do not. I do not pretend, in this talk or in my written report, to know with certainty whether the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was complicit in the October 22, 2014 attacks in Ottawa. But I do know that, given its history of complicity in establishing “terrorist” threats, as well as the serious anomalies and unanswered questions that stare us in the face when we investigate the October 22 events, the RCMP must be regarded as suspects.
Conclusions:
Let me end this talk by reiterating five points.
- There is a pattern, common enough in war and found in the War on Terror: Threat, followed by Unity, followed by Reaction, which has an internal and external dimension.
Whatever the value of this pattern to human survival at various times in our history, it can leave populations open to deception and manipulation.
- In the War on Terror deception and manipulation are exactly what we find. There is strong evidence that legislatures of the U.S. and Canada have been subjected to physical intimidation that has facilitated both the internal projects (repressive legislation) and the external projects (invasions and occupation) of the leaders of the War on Terror.
- A strong social taboo has been constructed that has hampered awareness of this deception and manipulation. The taboo extends through the population but is especially strong in legislatures, including the Parliament of Canada.
- This taboo ensures that our Canadian Parliament, like the U.S. Congress, is unfit to protect citizens from the deceptions and violence of the War on Terror and is even unable to protect itself.
- Of the four cases dealt with today, I regard complicity in the physical intimidation of legislatures by state agencies as established in three cases. In the fourth case, the events of October 22, 2014 in Canada, state-sponsored intimidation had not been established, but is a possibility that must be explored through investigation and research—formal and public if possible, but otherwise by members of civil society using all their intelligence and determination.
*
The text was edited by MacQueen for publication in Truth and Shadows. In addition to being a retired professor of Religious Studies and founder of McMaster’s Peace Studies program, MacQueen is the author of The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case For a Domestic Conspiracy.
Sources
Since this was a public talk rather than an article it included no notes. I directed the audience to websites where they could find more information.
9/11:
Websites important for understanding the destruction of the World Trade Center:
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
(The booklet, Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 (Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, 2015) can be purchased below:)
http://www.beyondmisinformation.org/#beyond-misinformation
Consensus 9/11: The 9/11 Best Evidence Panel:
The Journal of 9/11 Studies:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/
Anthrax:
There are several good books, but my own explores the relationship of the anthrax attacks to the 9/11 attacks more closely than other books: The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case For a Domestic Conspiracy (Clarity Press, 2014). This book also explores the intimidation of Congress by both sets of attacks.
http://www.claritypress.com/MacQueen.html
The two Canadian cases:
Information about the Nuttall-Korody case was obtained mainly from a series of articles by Vancouver Sun journalist Ian Mulgrew, who attended the couple’s trial and regularly posted articles about it.
Information about the events of October 22, 2014 can be found in my report, The October 22, 2014, Ottawa Shootings: Why Canadians Need a Public Inquiry (fall, 2015). The bibliography in that report includes both primary and secondary sources for those wishing to learn more. The report can be downloaded here:
http://democracyprobe.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/09021508.pdf
A slightly revised version is available here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C6DZU6W
Copyright © Prof. Graeme McQueen
The New York Times Anonymous Op-Ed – A Neocon Generated Document?
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | September 8, 2018
It seems that the entire world now knows that an Anonymous senior official on the White House staff has described an administration in chaos, headed by an “amoral” ignoramus, which only avoids disaster because a patriotic cabal within the West Wing that “puts country first” and constitutes a “resistance” has blocked or circumvented the president when he tries to do something unwise or dangerous. Or so the story goes.
My first admittedly quick reading of the op-ed “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” that appeared in The New York Times a week ago left me with the impression that it was a hoax, possibly concocted via the connivance of a lower level official in the national security apparatus who sold a dodgy package to the Times. The newspaper then cast aside all journalistic ethics to run with it in light of the near-simultaneous timing of the forthcoming Bob Woodward book Fear: Trump In the White House, which has a narrative that meshes nicely with the op-ed. The fact that the Times admits that it only had contact with the source, which may have been by phone, after dealing through intermediaries, suggests that they were hungry for the story and might not have carefully established the bona fides of the person claiming to be the author. And one has to wonder if the Times might have actively enabled a possible imposture to succeed or even engaged in some fabrication to delegitimize Donald Trump.
So it might just have been the latest symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but then I read the piece through again and observed that the argument being made was logically consistent, i.e. that Donald Trump’s instincts and morals are so bad that he would end up destroying the American Republic but for the brave White House staffers who are taking steps to “box-in” the president on policies that those same staffers view as undesirable. Also, stylistically and syntactically, I noted how the writing and some on the contents reflect the worldview and linear thinking of someone who has been working in some aspect of national security. Indeed, it read like the sort of document that might have been produced by an intelligence agency.
Assuming that it actually was written by an individual in the Administration, one might profitably consider that many mid-level and even higher White House staffers are increasingly being drawn from the neocon ranks that infested the George W. Bush Administration. They hate their boss Trump and they also hate Russia, which features prominently (and somewhat oddly) in the op-ed.
In short, I now believe that the op-ed is serious, with intent to undermine the Trump Administration, written by someone or several someones in or close to the White House. The argument that the author should have gone public and resigned can be countered by two observations: first, the staffer might actually believe that he and his brethren staying in place and blocking Trump is for the good of the country. And second, if an increasingly paranoid Trump becomes consumed by searching through his staff for Anonymous “traitors,” he will become even more error and gaffe-prone, strengthening the case, if it should come to it, for impeachment.
The author’s possible neocon credentials surface in several places, starting with the reference to the “more robust military” before proceeding on to Russia. The op-ed describes how the good work of the dissidents in the White House, which he or she describes as “the Resistance,” have succeeded in “[calling out] countries like Russia… for meddling and [have them] punished accordingly” in spite of the president’s desire for détente. It then goes on to elaborate on Russia and Trump, describing how “… the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But the national security team knew better – such actions had to be taken to hold Moscow accountable.”
The op-ed is also notable for its praise of recently deceased neocon icon Senator John McCain, urging all Americans to “follow his example.” It notes “Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.” One might point out that the combination of citation of McCain with expressions like “robust” military, “punishing Russia,” “malign behavior” and holding Moscow “accountable” are straight out of the neoconservative playbook. They are also assertions that can be challenged. McCain was a flat-out warmonger. The “meddling” in any serious fashion in America’s 2016 election has yet to be demonstrated and the Skripal spy case in Britain is also based on questionable evidence, while “malign behavior” depends on which side of the fence one is standing on. To heighten tension with nuclear-armed and capable Russia is not necessarily in America’s interest. And Anonymous also forgets that Trump’s margin of victory in 2016 came from voters who found his calls for mending relations with Moscow appealing.
In passing, one other bizarre feature of the op-ed is the description of Trump as “amoral.” Compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama that is quite an astonishing observation unless one considers rape, starting wars as a foreign policy option and assassinating American citizens to be just part of the job. And also the author might wonder about his or her own morality as he or she is betraying both his or her boss and plausibly the oath taken to uphold the Constitution.
But who wrote the op-ed and with what intention pales besides what the Times document appears to reveal. A cabal of senior officials who were not elected by the American people might be acting together and have possibly seen fit to circumvent the elected president by refusing to carry out his instructions as well as by actively and deliberately narrowing his options over policy issues to reflect what they think is best.
One might reasonably have problems with much of what Donald Trump does and how he does it, but our Constitution derives from the belief that the president and congressmen ought to be elected by popular vote and subject to the will of the people. Like it or not, the people spoke in November 2016. Nameless and faceless officials, many of whom are appointed purely on the basis of political connections, do not represent voters any more than they necessarily have any correct understanding about what is going on in the world. Their track record would suggest that they are wrong far more than they are right.
The Washington consensus has proven to be disastrous both for the American people and for many others worldwide. Anonymous represents the Establishment or Deep State or neoconservatism, call it what you will, striking back to bring down Trump. He or she is party to boxing in a president who, in his best moments, appears to be eager to bring change. Make no mistake, it all amounts to subversion of the intent of the Constitution of the United States and no one should regard “the Resistance,” if it truly exists, as patriotic or heroic.
The New York Times as Iago
Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion
By Diana Johnstone • Unz Review • September 7, 2018
The New York Times continues to outdo itself in the production of fake news. There is no more reliable source of fake news than the intelligence services, which regularly provide their pet outlets (NYT and WaPo ) with sensational stories that are as unverifiable as their sources are anonymous. A prize example was the August 24 report that US intelligence agencies don’t know anything about Russia’s plans to mess up our November elections because “informants close to … Putin and in the Kremlin” aren’t saying anything. Not knowing anything about something for which there is no evidence is a rare scoop.
A story like that is not designed to “inform the public” since there is no information in it. It has other purposes: to keep the “Russia is undermining our democracy” story on front pages, with the extra twist in this case of trying to make Putin distrustful of his entourage. The Russian president is supposed to wonder, who are those informants in my entourage?
But that was nothing compared to the whopper produced by the “newpaper of record” on September 5. (By the way, the “record” is stuck in the same groove: Trump bad, Putin bad – bad bad bad.) This was the sensational oped headlined “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, signed by nobody.
The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception.
The fictional author presents itself as a right-wing conservative shocked by Trump’s “amorality” – a category that outside the Washington swamp might include betraying the trust of one’s superior.
This anonymous enemy of amorality claims to approve of all the most extreme right-wing measures of the Trump administration as “bright spots”: deregulation, tax reform, a more robust military, “and more” – cleverly omitting mention of Trump’s immigration policy which could unduly shock the New York Times’ liberal readers. The late Senator John McCain, the model of bipartisan bellicosity, is cited as the example to follow.
The “resistance” proclaimed is solely against the facets of Trump’s foreign policy which White House insiders are said to be working diligently to undermine: peaceful relations with Russian and North Korea. Trump’s desire to avoid war is transformed into “a preference for autocrats and dictators”. (Trump gets no credit for his warlike rhetoric against Iran and close relations with Netanyahu, even though they must please Anonymous.)
The purpose of this is stunningly obvious. The New York Times has already done yeoman service in rounding up liberal Democrats and left-leaning independents in the anti-Trump lynch mob. But now the ploy is to rally conservative Republicans to the same cause of overthrowing the elected President. The letter amounts to an endorsement of future President Pence. Just get rid of Trump and you’ll have a nice, neat, ultra-right-wing Republican as President.
The Democrats may not like Pence, but they are so demented by hatred of Trump that they are visibly ready to accept the Devil himself to get rid of the sinister clown who dared defeat Hillary Clinton. Down with democracy; the votes of deplorables shouldn’t count.
That is treacherous enough, but even more despicable is the insidious design to destabilize the presidency by sowing distrust. Speaking of Trump, Mr and/or Ms Anonymous declare: “The dilemma – which he does not fully grasp – is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations” (meaning peace with Russia).
This is the Iago ploy. Shakespeare’s villain destroyed Othello by causing him to distrust those closest to him, his wife and closest associates. Like Trump in Washington, Othello, the “Moor” of Venice, was an outsider, that much easier to deceive and betray.
The New York Times is playing Iago, whispering that Putin in the Kremlin is surrounded by secret “informants”, and that Trump in the White House is surrounded by people systematically undermining his presidency. Putin is not likely to be impressed, but the trick might work with Trump, who is truly the target of open and covert enemies and whose position is much more insecure. There is certainly some undermining going on.
Was the New York Times oped written by the paper’s own writers or by the CIA? It hardly matters since they are so closely entwined.
No trick is too low for those who consider Trump an intolerable intruder on THEIR power territory. The New York Times “news” that Trump is surrounded by traitors is taken up by other media who indirectly confirm the story by speculating on “who is it?” The Boston Globe (among others) eagerly rushed in, asking:
“So who’s the author of the op-ed? It’s a question that has many people poking through the text, looking for clues. Meanwhile, the denials have come thick and fast. Here’s a brief look at some of the highest-level officials in the administration who might have a motive to write the letter.”
Isn’t it obvious that all this is designed to make Trump distrust everyone around him? Isn’t that a way to drive him toward that “crazy” where they say he already is, and which is fallback grounds for impeachment when the Mueller investigation fails to come up with anything more serious than the fact that Russian intelligent agents are intelligent agents?
The White House insider (or insiders, or whatever) use terms like “erratic behavior” and “instability” to contribute to the “Trump is insane” narrative. Insanity is the alternative pretext to the Mueller wild goose chase for divesting Trump of the powers of the presidency. If Trump responds by accusing the traitors of being traitors, that will be final proof of his mental instability. The oped claims to provide evidence that Trump is being betrayed, but if he says so, that will be taken as a sign of mental derangement. To save our exemplary democracy from itself, the elected president must be thrown out.
The military-industrial-congressional-deep state-media complex is holding its breath to breathe that great sigh of relief. The intruder is gone. Hurrah! Now we can go right on teaching the public to hate and fear the Russian enemy, so that arms contracts continue to blossom and NATO builds up its aggressive forces around Russia in hopes that this may frighten the Russians into dumping Putin in favor of a new Boris Yeltsin, ready to let the United States pursue the Clintonian plan of breaking up the Russian Federation into pieces, like the former Yugoslavia, in order to take them over one by one, with all their great natural resources.
And when this fails, as it has been failing, and will continue to fail, the United States has all those brand new first strike nuclear weapons being stationed in European NATO countries, aimed at the Kremlin. And the Russian military are not just sitting there with their own nuclear weapons, waiting to be wiped out. When nobody, not even the President of the United States, has the right to meet and talk with Russian leaders, there is only one remaining form of exchange. When dialogue is impossible, all that is left is force and violence. That is what is being promoted by the most influential media in the United States.
Does Twitter really care about pluralism and free speech? Let’s follow the money
RT | September 7, 2018
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has vigorously defended his platform as a place for free speech and political pluralism, but there’s one easy way to determine how much he really cares about all of that: Look at who Twitter gives money to.
In testimony to the US Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Dorsey proudly reminded senators that Twitter had last year banned advertising from RT and Sputnik. Then, presumably as some kind of gesture of apology, he said Twitter donated $1.9 million generated from RT and Sputnik advertising to “research” and “civil society” platforms working to counter Russian influence online.
When Twitter first announced that decision in October 2017, it said it was part of its “ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience” and admitted that it had made the decision in light of a US intelligence community report that concluded that Russia “attempted to interfere” with the 2016 presidential election. That report was widely panned as being extremely light on evidence, even by journalists who are generally highly critical of Moscow.
To put it simply, Dorsey admitted banning RT from advertising on its platform and then handing the money generated from previous advertising over to US government-funded think tanks. This kind of capitulation suggests that Dorsey believes free speech and pluralism is limited to how he treats Americans of different political persuasions on his platform, but not how he treats everyone else.
When Dorsey talks about giving everyone a fair shake on Twitter and ensuring that political bias does not get in the way of how Twitter functions, he seems to only ever be talking about the “health” of the debate and conversation when it comes to American political discourse — but not everyone using Twitter is an American politic worried about being “shadowbanned”.
In other words, he’s implying that while all American individuals should indeed be treated fairly, more broadly speaking, it’s totally fine to be openly and proudly biased in favor of American foreign policy, despite the fact that Twitter is supposed to be a global platform. Twitter is a tool of the US government in much the same way Facebook is. So let’s look at those organizations Dorsey has given money to:
The Atlantic Council
To see that Twitter has offered money to none other than the Atlantic Council to help “research” flimsy claims of election interference by Russia should immediately set off alarm bells.
The Atlantic Council has become widely regarded outside of Washington political and media circles as a vehicle for Western foreign policy promotion and propaganda. The Washington DC-based think tank is funded by a slew of American weapons manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The Atlantic Council is also funded by both the US government and a number of other NATO countries through various government agencies. Facebook is also a donor.
Unsurprisingly, given its donors list, the AC has lobbied consistently in favor of US military interventions around the world and has taken an almost exclusively negative view of Russia in international affairs. Is this think tank, funded by NATO governments and weapons makers really the kind of organization that can be trusted to fairly assess claims of Russian interference in American elections?
EU Disinfolab
Similar to the Atlantic Council, the Brussels-based EU Disinfolab has focused a huge amount of its attention on countering Russia online in recent years. Its stated mission is to “fight disinformation with innovative methodology” — but it certainly does not focus its attention evenly when it comes to fighting disinformation.
Disinfolab has drawn much criticism last month when it attempted to brand French Twitter users posting about a national scandal involving President Emmanuel Macron’s former bodyguard as “Russophiles” who were part of the “Russian disinformation system”. More of Twitter’s “research” money well spent?
Disinfo lab is also partnered with the Brussels-based European Values think tank which made headlines last year when it published a list of 2,327 people who had appeared as guests on RT, branding them all “useful idiots” for their appearances on the channel. Included on the list were the likes of journalist Bob Woodward, former US Vice President Dick Cheney, actors Denzel Washington and Pierce Brosnan and the late Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.
Partners in fight against US ‘adversaries’, rather than ‘neutral arbiters’?
If any more evidence was needed that Twitter happily acts as a vehicle for US government propaganda, the Senate hearing on Wednesday provided it in abundance. When Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arizona) asked Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg, who was also present to give testimony on behalf of Facebook, if they would ever take any kind of action that would favor or “privilege” a “hostile foreign power” over the United States or its military, both Dorsey and Sandberg said no, they would not. It was only when Cotton asked “Do you prefer to see America remain the world’s dominant global superpower?” that Dorsey declined to answer directly, offering: “I prefer that we continue to help everywhere we serve.”
Cotton later suggested to Dorsey and Sandberg that Facebook and Twitter should be actively working on behalf of the US government and not acting as “even handed or neutral arbiters”.
The subdued responses from Sandberg and Dorsey to Cotton’s questions, clearly both afraid to say anything that would suggest their platforms are not there to serve US government interests, seemed to suggest that they have little interest in challenging the assumption that their job is to work on behalf of the White House against “bad actors” around the world.
During the hearing Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) told Sandberg and Dorsey that while they had come a “long way” in recognizing the threat posed by Russia’s “malicious activities” on their platforms, there was still “a lot of work to do”. Warner said it was unlikely that Facebook and Twitter could combat Russia alone without some action from Congress itself, declaring that the “era of the wild west in social media is coming to an end”.
It looks like when it comes to censorship and US government influence over social media platforms, this is just the beginning.
Read more:
Skripal Case: Luke Harding’s latest work of fiction
By Kit | OffGuardian | September 6, 2018
Luke Harding likes writing books about things that he wasn’t really involved in and doesn’t really understand. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, that covers pretty much everything. His book about Snowden, for example, was beautifully taken down by Julian Assange – a person who was actually there.
He’s priming the traumatised public for another of his works, this time about Sergei Skripal. This one will probably be out by Christmas, unless he can find someone else’s work to plagiarise, in which case he might get it done sooner.
It will have a snide and not especially clever title, perhaps a sort of pun – something like the “A Poison by Any Other Name: How Russian assassins contaminated the heart of rural England”. It will relate, in jarring sub-sub-le Carre prose, a story of Russian malfeasance and evil beyond imagining, whilst depicting the whole cast as bumbling caricatures, always held up for ridicule by the author and his smug readership.
There’s an extract in The Guardian today. It’s not listed as one, but trust me, it will be in the book. It’s title, as predicted above, is sort of a pun (and will probably be a chapter heading):
Planes, trains and fake names: the trail left by Skripal suspects
You see? Like that film? I don’t really get it either but until someone else comes up with something clever he can copy, Luke is left to his own rather meagre devices.
It starts off surprisingly strong, waiting three whole sentences before lurching violently into totally unsupported conjecture:
The two men were dressed inconspicuously in jeans, fleece jackets and trainers as they boarded the flight from Moscow to Gatwick. Their names, according to their Russian passports, were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were around 40 years old. Neither looked suspicious.
This is, as far as we know so far, true.
The plane trundled down the icy runway. In Moscow the temperatures had fallen below -10C, not unusual for early March. In Britain it had been snowing.
… and so is this. In fact, in googling “Moscow weather March 2018” Harding has displayed an uncharacteristically thorough approach to research that was rarely (if ever) evidenced in his previous works.
They had also packed a bottle of what appeared to be the Nina Ricci perfume Premier Jour. The box it came in was prettily decorated with flowers, it listed ingredients including alcohol and it bore the words “Made in France”.
This is where truth ends and guesses take over: there is no evidence, at all, that these two men had anything to do with the “perfume bottle” allegedly found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th and allegedly containing a powerful nerve agent. There is (as far as we know) no fingerprint or DNA evidence on the bottle, nobody saw them with the bottle, and there’s no released CCTV footage of them holding or carrying the bottle. Saying “it’s in their backpack” is meaningless without any evidence to back it up.
According to the Metropolitan police, the bottle in fact contained novichok, a lethal nerve agent developed in the late Soviet Union. The bottle had been specially made to be leakproof and had a customised applicator.
Note he doesn’t feel the need to examine, question or even verify the words of the Metropolitan Police [Seemingly, in the UK, bottles are designed to leak]. This is a recurring theme in Harding’s works – there are people who tell the truth (US) and people who lie (RUSSIANS). Evidence is a complication you can live without.
Moscow’s notorious poisons factory run by the KGB made similar devices throughout the cold war.
Did they? Because he doesn’t show any evidence this is true. One thing you can be sure of, if there had ever been even a whisper about a “modified perfume bottle” in any Soviet archive or from any “whistleblower currently living in the United States”, it would be on the front page in big black letters.
Petrov and Boshirov were aliases, detectives believe. Both men are suspected to be career officers with the GRU, Russia’s powerful and highly secretive military intelligence service.
Note use of the word “believe”, it makes regular appearances alongside it’s buddies: “suspect” and “probably”.
And yes, they “believe” they are aliases because IF they were assassins then obviously they used aliases. There’s no evidence taken from their (currently totally theoretical) visa applications that point to forgery, nobody at the time questioned their passports. As of today, we have been given no reason to think they were aliases, except reasoning backwards from assumed guilt… which isn’t how deduction works.
In fact, there’s more than enough reason to assume they aren’t aliases – Firstly, they passed the visa check, secondly their passports were never questioned, thirdly they’ve used them before (see below), and finally… just WHY would a Russian spy-come-assassin use a fake Russian name and a fake Russian passport? That’s ridiculous.
The officers’ assignment was covert. They were coming to Britain not as tourists but as assassins.
[citation needed]
Their target was Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who spied for British intelligence, got caught and was freed in a spy exchange in 2010. They were heading for his home in provincial Salisbury.
Luke doesn’t feel the need to dig down into the nitty gritty here – motive is a trifle, to be added in the footnotes or made up on the spur of the moment when asked at a book signing. I’m a bit more fussy than that – I feel the need to ask “Why did they release him in 2010 and then try to kill him in 2018?” If they had wanted to kill him, why not just do it when he was in prison in Russia between 2006 and 2010? If they wanted to kill him… why do it just weeks before the World Cup? What could they possibly have to gain?
Luke doesn’t know, and neither do I.
Their Aeroflot flight SU2588 touched down at 3pm on Friday 2 March. They were recorded on CCTV going through passport control, Boshirov with dark hair and a goatee beard, Petrov unshaven and wearing a blue gingham shirt. Both were carrying satchels slung casually over the shoulder.
This is all true, and completely unnecessary. It’s what we in the industry call “filler” or “padding”. Totally meaningless and useless words that do nothing but take up space. Without it, a lot of Luke’s books would only be about 700 words long.
According to police, the pair had visited the UK before.
Way to bury the lead there, Luke.
This is actually quite important isn’t it? I mean, when did they visit the UK before? Did they visit Salisbury then too? Did they have any contact with Sergei Skripal? Were they travelling under the same names? Were these visits linked with other intelligence work? Were they just holidays? What kind of assassins would use the SAME FAKE IDS ON TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS?
These are all very important questions, but Luke doesn’t ask them. Because Luke is a modern journalist, and they don’t interrogate the claims of the state, just report them. To Guardian reporters a question mark is just that funny squiggle next to the shift key.
From Gatwick they caught the train to London Victoria station and then the tube to east London, where they checked in to the City Stay hotel in Bow. It was a low-profile choice of accommodation. The red-brick Victorian building is next to a branch of Barclays bank, a busy train line and a wall daubed with graffiti. Across the road is a car pound and a Texaco garage.
This just more filler. Totally meaningless packaging material. The prose equivalent of All-Bran.
On hostile territory, Boshirov and Petrov operated in the manner of classic intelligence operatives.
In this instance “the manner of classic intelligence operatives” means, flying direct to London from Moscow, using Russian names and Russian passports (which you’ve used before), checking into a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, going straight to the hometown of an ex-double agent, leaving a Russian poison his front door even though he’s already gone out, dumping your unused poison in a charity bin on the high street, going back to your hotel, smearing poison around that too even though you already dumped it, and then flying directly back to Moscow without even waiting to see if the plan worked and the target is dead.
This, in Luke’s head, is ace intelligence work.
On the day of the hit, according to detectives, the pair made a similar journey, taking the 8.05am train from Waterloo to Salisbury and arriving at 11.48am.
Yes, they arrived at 11.48, making it absolutely pointless to put poison on the Skripal’s door, as they had already gone out.
The perfume bottle was probably concealed in a light grey backpack carried by Petrov.
It was “probably concealed” in that backpack because, as I said above, there’s no evidence either of those men ever knew the perfume bottle existed. You never see it in their possession.
Oh, and the backpack would have to contain TWO bottles of perfume – because the police aren’t sure the bottle Rowley found 3 months later was the same bottle, and Rowley reported it was unopened and wrapped in cellophane. Perhaps Luke should have read the details of the case instead of trolling IMDB looking for movie titles with “plane” in them or googling “insouciant” to see if he was using it right.
From Salisbury station the two men set off on foot. It was a short walk of about a mile to Skripal’s semi-detached home in Christie Miller Road.
… which doesn’t matter, because the Skripals weren’t there. They left at 9.15 and there is no evidence they ever returned.
At Skripal’s house the Russians smeared or sprayed novichok on to the front door handle, police say.
… which doesn’t matter, because the Skripals weren’t there. They left at 9.15 and there is no evidence they ever returned.
It doesn’t matter if Borishov and Petrov re-tiled the bathroom with novichok grouting or hid novichok in the battery compartment of Sergei’s TV remote or replaced all his lightbulbs with novichok bombs that explode when you use the clapper…. according to everything we’ve been told so far Sergei and Julia were literally never in that house again.
Luke seems to write a lot about this case, considering he is barely acquainted with the most basic facts of it.
The moment went unobserved
True. There is not a single piece of footage, photograph or eyewitness placing these men within a hundred feet of the Skripals, or their house. The “moment went unobserved” is an incredibly dishonest way of phrasing this, “the moment is entirely theoretical” is rather fairer. Or, if you want to be honest “it’s possible none of this happened”.
At some point on their walk back they must have tossed away the bottle, which at this point was too dangerous to try to smuggle back through customs.
It’s all falling into place perfectly isn’t it?
At some point the two men, who we never see holding or carrying the bottle, must have thrown it away because three months later someone else found it.
They took it through customs once but couldn’t a second time, because reasons.
Also one of them was smiling a sort of “I just poisoned somebody” smile:
At 1.05pm the men were recorded in Fisherton Street on their way back to the station. They appeared more relaxed, Petrov grinning even.
Those evil bastards.
By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the poisoners were gone.
No Luke: By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the ALLEGED poisoners were gone.
Alleged is an important word for example, there is a marked difference between being an ALLEGED plagiarist, and being a plagiarist.
The visitors were captured on CCTV one more time, at Heathrow airport. It was 7.28pm and both men were going through security, Petrov first, wheeling a small black case. In his right hand was a shiny red object, his Russian passport. Police believe the passport was genuine, his name not. In other words, that it was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by a state or state entities.
You see? Nobody thought the passport was fake, which means it was a really good fake. So the Russian state must have been in on it. This is known as an unfalsifiable hypothesis. If the passport did look fake, that would be evidence that the men were spies… and therefore the Russian state was in on it.
Harding has created a narrative where there is literally no development that could ever challenge his conclusions.
Seemingly, the GRU plan – executed two weeks before Russia’s presidential election – had worked perfectly.
This is an example of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy – two things happen at the same time, therefore they happen for the same reason. It’s a maneuver we at OffG refer to as “the Harding”, where you state two separate assertions or facts one after the other in such a way as to imply a relationship, without ever making a solid statement. I’ll give you an example:
Luke Harding was born in 1968, mere weeks before the brutal assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Harding is suggesting some sort of connection between the election and the poisoning. He can’t STATE it, because then he has to explain his reasoning – and there isn’t any. Putin, and Russia as a whole, had nothing to gain from poisoning an ex-spy they had released nearly a decade earlier, especially on the eve of a Presidential election and mere weeks before the World Cup. There’s no argument to be made, so he doesn’t attempt to make one, he just makes a snide and baseless insinuation.
In his defense, Luke might genuinely believe it, cum hoc ergo propter hoc is a favorite amongst paranoid personalities, of which Luke is definitely a prime example.
Vladimir Putin, the man whom a public inquiry found in 2016 had “probably” signed off on the operation to kill Litvinenko. The UK security services say a “body of evidence” points to the GRU.
“Probably” is also a big word. For example, there’s a marked difference between “probably being a plagiarist” and “being a plagiarist”.
It seems clear that Moscow continues to view Britain as a playground for undercover operations and is relatively insouciant about the consequences, diplomatic and political. The Skripal attack may have misfired. But the message, mingling contempt and arrogance, is there for all to see: we can smite our enemies whenever and wherever we want, and there is nothing you can do about it.
This is the second time Luke has used the word “insouciant” in two days, which means that word of the day calendar was probably a sound investment, but he forgot to flip it over this morning.
Other than that, this final paragraph is nothing but paranoia.
The Russians were TRYING to make it obvious, to send a message. But were also lazy and arrogant. And yet also left no solid evidence because they are experts at espionage. They had no motive except being mean, and couldn’t even be bothered to make sure they did it right. They want us all to know they did it, but will never admit it.
The actual truth of the situation can be summed up in a few bullet points. Currently:
- There is no evidence these men were using forged documents.
- There is no evidence these men were travelling under aliases or assumed names.
- There is no evidence these men ever had any contact with Sergei Skripal’s house.
- There is no evidence these men ever had any contact with Sergei Skripal or his daughter.
- There is no evidence these men were Russian intelligence assets or had any military training.
- There is no evidence these men ever possessed or had any contact with the perfume bottle found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th.
- They have visited the UK before, not on intelligence business (as far as we know).
- Their movements don’t align with the timeline of Skripal’s illness.
The entire narrative is created around half a dozen screen caps of two (allegedly) Russian men, not behaving in any way illegally or even suspiciously. All the rest is fiction, created by a hack to service an agenda. This isn’t one of those “You couldn’t make it up” stories, it’s not that incredible. It’s just insulting and stupid.
You could make it up, and he did.
Fox News Report on Iran’s ‘Arms Smuggling’ Plays Into Pentagon’s Hands – Analyst
Sputnik – September 6, 2018
Fox News has accused an Iranian civil aviation company of smuggling arms into Lebanon, destined for the Hezbollah militant group, using “clandestine routes” said to have been uncovered by Western intelligence. Iran makes no secret of its political support for the Shia group but has vehemently denied supplying them with weapons.
In a recent report, Fox claimed, citing unnamed intelligence sources, that two “rare and unusual” flights by Qeshm Fars Air, a cargo hauler, were made from Tehran to Beirut recently, one of them making a short layover in Damascus. As possible evidence of wrongdoing, Fox cited the planes’ trajectories, with the flight paths allegedly avoiding parts of western Syria.
© Photo : FlightRadar24/Google Maps
One plane’s route showing that it passed over northern Lebanon after a brief layover in Damascus
Overlooking the idea that Qeshm Fars Air may have routed its planes this way out of security concerns, given that Syria is a war zone, Fox claimed, citing a “regional intelligence source,” that Iran was “testing and defying the West’s abilities” to track its alleged weapons smuggling.
Speaking to Sputnik Persian, Dr. Seyed Hadi Afghahi, a Middle Eastern affairs observer and former diplomat who has served in the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon, said that Fox’s coverage was not surprising, given their role in the American political and media landscape.
“First off, let’s recall what interests Fox News represents. This is one of the media mouthpieces sponsored by the US Department of Defense. Its senior executives consist of cadres representing the Zionist lobby in the US, or receive instructions from Tel Aviv,” Afghahi said.
“Second: why does Fox News cite ‘Western intelligence services’ without giving specifics, or the name of the service, for example, MI6? The channel offers very vague information without specifying even the name of the service which could confirm or deny such statements. This sort of reporting speaks for itself. Either documents must be presented, or reliable sources identified, which can confirm what the channel says.”
Finally, Afghahi said that given the fact that this was not the first time that Fox has been accused of spreading false stories, “the informational content presented, which isn’t supported by evidence, cannot be taken at face value.”
Who Benefits?
According to Dr. Afghahi, the more important aspect in the smuggling story is finding out what concrete goals Fox may be pursuing. Afghahi believes that the situation in the Syrian province of Idlib, the last major stronghold of extremist militants, and Syrian Army plans to liberate the territory, is the real “stick in the craw” for the US and Israel at this time. The “arms smuggling” story, in this light, is just an excuse for Western intervention in Syria against Damascus and its allies, including Iran and Hezbollah.
“Today, the region is in a very difficult and sensitive situation,” the observer stressed. “The operation to liberate Idlib, where terrorist groups and even the Turkish army are still operating, is approaching; this causes discontent among certain parties, who would like to prevent such an operation from being carried out. This, first and foremost, includes the United States, which uses its informational, strategic, military and political resources to engage in sabotage. Moreover, the US has officially warned that if the Syrian Army were to be joined by the forces of its allies, Iran and Hezbollah, this would constitute an escalation of the situation in the region, result in increased casualties, and possibly even the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces.”
Washington, according to Afghahi, “is distraught” over the fact that the victory over terrorism in Syria will be won by Bashar and his allies Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, and not by the US. “This fact is a great disappointment to the US and its allies. Therefore, they are preparing the groundwork, using all possible levers of influence, including spreading fake news, to ensure that this doesn’t happen.”
Ultimately, Afghahi emphasized that by pushing the smuggling narrative, Fox is working to provide both Washington and Tel Aviv with a pretext to strike Iranian advisers and Hezbollah fighters in Syria, where the latter have assisted in Damascus’s fight against terrorism.
Russia is not involved in Skripal case at any level – Kremlin
RT | September 6, 2018
Russia has nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning case at any level, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, slamming “unacceptable” British allegations.
“Neither Russia’s top leadership nor those with lower ranks, and no country’s officials, have had anything to do with the events in Salisbury,” Peskov said. He rebuffed UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that the attack on the ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter was approved at “senior level of the Russian state.”
“Any accusations against Russian leadership are unacceptable,” the spokesman added.
On Wednesday, UK prosecutors named two “Russians” whom they accuse of poisoning the Skripals. May later claimed that the duo were officers of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. Firing back, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the names and photos of the two men ‘do not mean anything’ to Moscow and called on London “to abandon making public accusations and media manipulations.”
If the UK wants Russia to take action, it should send an official request in the first place in accordance with existing agreements, Peskov stressed, noting that media reports and statemens in parliament cannot replace it.
“We need a request from the British side to check their [suspects’] identities, to give us legal grounds for the identity checks. There is a common practice [for it],” he told journalists. He stressed that from the very beginning Moscow offered cooperation on the case, but London has been reluctant to agree.
One of the main arguments leading the UK to repeat its “highly likely” mantra regarding Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning has been that the Novichok nerve agent – allegedly used in this case – could have only been produced by Russia. However, foreign specialists have long been familiar with the formula, which was developed by the Soviet Union.
The new “revelations,” however, are not more plausible that the previous ones, Charles Shoebridge, a security expert and a former British military officer, told RT. The simple fact that allegedly well-trained Russian intelligence specialists could have left behind so much evidence speaks for itself, he says.
“It seems very strange that these people have absolutely left what seems to be a very reckless and clear trail of evidence, which almost seems to be designed, or at least would almost inevitably lead to the conclusions that the police and the authorities have come to today, in other words that Russia [is] to blame,” he told RT.
Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer, said she doubts Russia’s alleged motive behind the Salisbury incident and that certain pieces of evidence reported by the media “may look pretty compelling but will never be tested in a real court of law.”
First they came for the home-schooled….
By Kit | OffGuardian | September 4, 2018
There is a war being waged. Not the one in Syria or Yemen. Not the Nazis shelling the Donbass or the warlords selling slaves in Libya. Not America’s drones executing an entire garden party in Pakistan because somebody on that street might have googled “bomb components” and “American Airlines” on the same day 10 years ago. Not even between the ridiculous buffoon Trump, and the equally absurd “resistance”.
A different kind of war.
Perhaps “struggle” would be a better word.
The struggle is eternal in every direction – it has always been, it will always be. It goes to each horizon and both poles and everywhere in between. In every mind and body. A global conflict with a million fronts in a thousand theatres.
People versus power: A struggle between the population and the power to control it, personified through institutions and governments.
People don’t want to be controlled, they naturally resist it.
Institutions know only control, they crave it.
Power is addictive like that, and institutions are true addicts. Give them a little power and they’ll want a little more. Give them a lot, and they want it all. Power tends to corrupt, as the saying goes, but the inverse is also true: the corrupt tend towards power. They are more likely to want it, more likely to be willing to do anything to get it, and more likely to abuse it once they have it.
That’s the point of democracy of course, to keep the soil tilled. To turn over the manure and hope something green can grow. To fight against corruption by giving it no time to ferment. To stop the rot setting in. It doesn’t really work, but it works better than anything else.
Somehow The Guardian has found its way to the vanguard of this war. It’s picked its side in the great conflict, and it wasn’t ours. Every day, in every way, The Guardian shows its support for them over us. Every campaign, every agenda, is about empowering the state and destroying the individual. They want to hand the government the power to control what we eat, what we say, who we say it to, where we go, how we get there. Even what we think.
It is a struggle for control of life on Earth, not on the grand scale, but the specific. Every small decision, every tiny moment, every thought and word and action will need government approval. Global hegemony won’t come via Imperial wars of conquest, but a conglomeration of tiny restrictions of individual freedom. If they don’t want to ban things, they want to regulate them. If they can’t regulate them, they want to tax them. Which is to say, ban it… for poor people.
Ban sugar, because it’s bad for you. Ban meat, because of global warming. Ban sport because it’s violent. Ban air travel because of carbon emissions. Ban alcohol because it exploits addicts. Ban free speech because it’s offensive. Ban alternate medicine because it might not work.
Ban freedom because it’s dangerous.
Don’t like that, don’t watch this, don’t read those.
Don’t do X, don’t say Y, don’t think Z.
In every issue, on every issue, The Guardian is the spokesperson of the authoritarian heart of the state – pleading for more power in the name of the safety of the masses or the grand virtue of the collective.
Today’s topic: this editorial under the headline:
The Guardian view on home-schooling in England: a register is needed
The editorial is anonymous – why The Guardian does this, I do not know. It could be that they are trying to put across a collective identity, it could be that some thoughts are so shameful and absurd that even Guardian journalists won’t cop to them, or it could be they receive written memos from GCHQ or government press offices and simply copy and paste them into their website. It could be some odd combination of all three.
Whatever the explanation, there’s no name on it… so we don’t know who wrote it. We just know they have an agenda and aren’t ashamed to stretch logic to breaking point in order to service it. The agenda is simple – regulate homeschooling into oblivion, ban it if we have to, regulate it if we can. Homeschooling is a problem in desperate need of a solution:
Children educated by their parents must not be hidden from the authorities.
… shrieks the sub-head. Without ever providing any evidence that a) Home-schooled children ARE hidden from authorities or b) That, if true, this is a bad thing.
It’s all notionally about Jordan Burling, a young man who allegedly lived a terribly sad life of abuse and neglect, and then died at the age of 18. He was also home-schooled.
Let’s be clear about this: Child abuse and neglect happen, they are an unfortunate fact of life for a tiny minority of children. There is no reason to imply a connection with home-schooling and force a causation where only correlation exists.
All of Jack the Ripper’s victims wore shoes. Ergo we need to regulate shoes in order to protect people from serial killers.
The author (whoever they were) is, however, intent on ignoring a basic fact of life – that a factor can be present without being causative – in order to pursue their chosen agenda:
… there is no reason for the government to wait before acting on behalf of other home-schooled children, of whom there are thought to be around 50,000 in the UK – a number that has increased sharply in recent years.
There is nothing to suggest home-schooled children are at risk. In fact, there is no evidence that being home-schooled leads to an increased risk of abuse or neglect. How do I know this? Because the article says so, in the next sentence:
There is no evidence that being home-schooled leads to an increased risk of abuse or neglect.
Literally, the very next sentence. Look…
So, as it turns out, not only IS there a reason to “wait before acting on behalf of other home-schooled children”, the article actually provides it to us. A more spectacular own goal you will not see this side of England’s next World Cup campaign.
The author, to their “credit” (for want of a better word), doesn’t seem to be totally unself-aware, feeling the need to claw back some of their “credibility” (for want of a better word), by adding some more facts to their “article” (for want of a better word):
The government believes most home educators do a good job. But reviews following the death from scurvy of eight-year-old Dylan Seabridge in Wales in 2011, and of Khyra Ishaq, who was starved to death aged seven in Birmingham in 2008, highlighted home-schooling as a factor. Concerns around safeguarding, and what happens when children disappear from the view of professionals who might otherwise support them, are one reason why the government is seeking to tighten and clarify the rules surrounding home education.
That’s it. The weight of the case against home-schooling is three deaths over 10 years. The prosecution rests.
Let’s now put a counter case:
IF home-schooling is the recipient of one The Guardians favorite “crackdowns”, what will the results be?
In the best scenario: nothing. Because…
There is no evidence that being home-schooled leads to an increased risk of abuse or neglect.
But let’s make a wild leap of speculation, and assume that the Tory government which sends men and women dying of cancer back to work, and refuses benefits to thousands of sick and disabled people, may not act either ethically or competently. Maybe, just maybe, they will simply create a bureaucratic nightmare of a system that sees more children taken away from their families, possibly thousands more, on spurious and absurd grounds. These children will then be thrown into the system of foster homes and adoption…a system which definitely DOES lead to an “increased risk of abuse or neglect”.
“The Guardian view” is that the state should be more active in protecting children. But our state sells weapons to Saudi Arabia to drop on school buses, and wants to take away free school meals from underprivileged children. Our state doesn’t a give a toss about children – foreign or domestic – and demonstrates this to us every single day.
It doesn’t take much imagination to progress further down this road to hell – paved, as always, with “good intentions”: We already know the government spies on us, they pass laws making it legal, so it’s all fine. But handing the government the power to control home-schooling, coupled with monitoring internet and phone communication, could easily lead to a massive political bias in the way the new home school laws are enforced: Leftwingers, trades unionists, “conspiracy theorists”, all being refused the right to home-school their children based on their tweets, their voting history or their Amazon wishlist.
It’s really not that hard to imagine.
Ask yourself: Why is The Guardian – allegedly a liberal paper in favour of being nice, recycling, tweedy cardigans with leather elbow patches, slippers, refugees and the Antiques Roadshow – in favour of handing the uncaring, even malign state, more power and authority?
The only logical answer is they want to create a more authoritarian state. A cross between Stalinist Russia and Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, where everyone has been successfully Mrs Lovejoyed into obeying Big Brother because he really does know best. A jolly, comforting oligarchy with twinkly grandfather eyes and half-moon spectacles. A nice, friendly dystopia with burning incense and herbal tea and drifty floral print dresses. Where everyone gets a turn and everyone is special and everyone does what they’re told… or else.
A new kind of “progressive” statism. Where our caring authoritarian masters aren’t controlling or dictatorial because they want to be, but because they need to be, for our sake. A kindly overlord child-proofing the world for the betterment of their naive charges.
Homeschooling is increasing, on both sides of the Atlantic, this is unsurprising given the above facts, the decline in the quality of education, the drop in schools funding and a generally unacademic attitude of control, censorship and indoctrination that has taken hold of a lot of Western institutions in recent years.
That same attitude will push, harder and harder, to clamp down on homeschooling – if not to outright ban it, then set a “home school” syllabus. The syllabus will be either impossible to implement, meaning parents can’t homeschool, or so incredibly controlled that it eradicates the benefits of homeschooling in the first place.
The campaign has already started state-side, where certain law-makers leapt upon the convenient Perris case to try push anti-home school legislation through the state, with the assistance of the media of course. Fortunately, it was defeated.
As I said, it is a war with multiple fronts. A war to take ownership of the individual and control of the sovereignty of the self, and it is won by the people when we talk to each other and rely on ourselves. That’s why they want to get a hold on home-schoolers, and why they’ll continue to push at social media to ferret out dissent.
You can see the pattern with vaccination – how, in America, political debate on vaccination was dismissed as a products “Russian bots” trying to “sow division”. Once the law to ban homeschools is put forward, anybody criticising it on Facebook will be a Russian bot.
First they came for the homeschooled, and I did not speak out… because they banned my Twitter.
Israel newspaper incites against Corbyn, Muslims in UK
MEMO | September 3, 2018
Israel Hayom newspaper yesterday ran an article inciting against Muslims in the UK and leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
“The British capital of London has become a base for Islamic groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood outside the Middle East and the centre for the campaign to delegitimise Israel,” columnist Eldad Beck said in an article published yesterday.
Beck added that this comes in the context of “the radical speech led by British leader Jeremy Corbyn, noting to the increase in non-governmental political movements with only one common goal that is calling for the elimination of Israel.”
“There are a number of Hamas men who are running the battle to delegitimise Israel in Britain and are working to spread it around the world in order to legitimise the elimination of Israel. They have been organising fleets for solidarity with Gaza since 2010, led by the Turkish Mavi Marmara flotilla which caused Israel unprecedented harmful propaganda,” he claimed.
“Some Hamas figures in Britain are leading the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and some have even filed legal complaints against British journalists who claimed that they have links with Hamas’ military activities, while others have issued anti-Semitic statements and got closer to Corbyn who received at the British Parliament Hamas representatives who had expressed their support for armed operations,” Beck added.
Meanwhile, former Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Major General Yossi Kuperwasser, said “Britain is witnessing the emergence of what we can call the Green-Red Alliance, and one of its objectives is to wipe Israel off the map.”
“This alliance extends from Britain to the rest of the Western countries including the United States, but Britain is still the strongest body to export the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology to the rest of the globe.”
“Palestinian activists in Britain are aiming to establish more Islamic organisations to influence the Kingdom’s internal and external policies,” he added.
Reddit Identifies A New Threat: The Truth – #PropagandaWatch
corbettreport | September 3, 2018
Reddit is a controlled propaganda platform. Shocking, I know. Join James for this week’s edition of #PropagandaWatch where he breaks down self-proclaimed homepage of the internet’s war on truth.
SHOW NOTES: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=27990
Featured Video
Douglas Macgregor: No Peace – U.S. Prepares for ‘Total War’ Against Iran
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Douglas Macgregor: No Peace – U.S. Prepares for ‘Total War’ Against Iran
- How A Fake Iranian Terror Group Was Invented To Proscribe IRGC in Europe
- Iran’s judiciary rejects Trump’s claim on ‘planned execution’ of 8 women
- Israeli army blows up school in southern Lebanon in violation of ceasefire
- The desalination front: Water as Israel’s Achilles heel
- Washington cuts flow of US dollars to Iraqi central bank until ‘acceptable’ government formed
- China blames US for diplomatic impasse with Iran, urges it to show ‘sincerity’ in talks
- Iran announces new Hormuz restrictions after US ceasefire violations
- After Islamabad: How the Global South Is Reshaping Eurasian Geopolitics
- Is Trump Going for Armageddon?
- If Americans Knew
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- Replay: Israel’s slow ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Holy Land
- 5 times Israelis desecrated Christian sites in the past two years
- US running out of weaponry for Israel’s war; Iran has plenty – Daily Update
- Israel is (still) killing aid workers in Gaza
- Catholics finally splitting with Trump over Iran war and Israel
- Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Massacre Leaves Lebanese Families Giving DNA To ID Loved One’s Remains
- ‘I Felt I Was a Monster’: IDF Soldiers Talk About the ‘Moral Injury’ – and the Silence
- No Tricks Zone
- 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
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 