A little over 20 years ago, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
One year later, on October 24-26, 2000, another “hypothetical” military exercise was played out featuring an airline crashing into the Pentagon killing 341 people followed by yet another May 2001 Department of Defense “hypothetical scenario” which saw hundreds of medical personnel training for a “guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner” crashing into the Pentagon.
What arose from the smoke and debris of September 11, 2001 was unlike anything the sleeping masses or international community expected.
The shock effect so traumatized the masses that quite suddenly, citizens found themselves willing to give up their liberties at home while acquiescing to any retaliatory action desired by their government abroad. The scale of horror was so great that the international community banded together and showed their love and solidarity towards America in the wake of the tragedy with candlelight vigils across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and South America. Humanity’s natural tendency to embrace and aid our fellow man in times of crisis expressed itself like a bright light in a world of confused darkness and a hope for a durable peace awoke in the hearts of many.
Alas, as the world came soon to discover, that hope was short lived.
The Neocon Takeover of America
Police State measures grew swiftly with the Patriot Act and mass internal surveillance under the “crisis management” run by the neocon cabal in the White House. While a new type of regime change war was created abroad, Dangerous protocols for Cheney’s “Continuity of Government” were set into motion and with these procedures, new mandates for Martial Law were created amplifying the powers, financing and deployment of U.S. Military capabilities both within the USA “under crisis conditions” and around the world.
Governments that had no connection to 9/11 were swiftly targeted for destruction using false evidence of “yellowcake” produced in the bowels of MI6, and a broader unipolar military encirclement of both Russia and China was set into motion which President Putin called out brilliantly in his famous 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech.
Of course this should not have been a surprise for anyone who took the time to read the Project for a New American Century manifesto published in October 2000 entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (RAD).
Under the Chairmanship of William Kristol (a neocon agent today leading the charge to impeach President Trump) and co-authored by John Bolton, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld, RAD stated that to “further the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one-absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor”. Going further to describe its Hobbesian agenda, the cabal stated that “the Cold War was a bipolar world; the 21st century world is- for the moment at least- decidedly unipolar with America as the world’s sole superpower”.
While much has been said about the “inside job” of 9/11, a lesser appreciated terrorist act occurred over several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001 killing five and infective 17 in the form of envelopes laced with bio-weaponized anthrax.
The Age of Bioweapons and PNAC
This anthrax attack led quickly into the 2004 Bioshield Act with a $5 billion budget and mandate to “pre-empt and defend further bioweapon attacks”. This new chapter of the revolution in military affairs was to be coordinated from leading bioweapons facility at the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. Since 2002, over $50 billion has been spent on Bioweapons research and defense to date.
The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons (and other next generation war tech) stating: “Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.
Lawyer and bioweapons expert Francis Boyle stated in 2007 that Fort Detrick’s mandate includes “acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packing, and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for offensive weapon programs.” These new post-9/11 practices fully trashed the 1975 UN Convention Against Biological Weapons ratified by the USA by establishing a vast international network of bioweapons labs coordinated from Fort Detrick which would be assigned the role of doing much of the dirty work that the U.S. was “officially” prevented from doing on its own soil.
Where Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to justify his enabling Acts, the neocons had their 9/11. The difference in the case of America was that Cheney failed to achieve the same level of absolute control over his nation as Hitler captured by 1934 (evidenced by pushback from patriotic American military intelligence circles against Cheney’s Iran war agenda). With this neocon failure, the republic lurched on.
The Rot Continues Under Obama
Obama’s rise was seen as a hopeful light to many naïve Democrats who still had not realized how a “false left” vs “false right” clash had been slowly constructed over the post WWII years. Either camp increasingly found itself converging towards the same world government agenda through using somewhat dissimilar paths and flavors.
It didn’t take long for many of Obama’s more critically-minded supporters to realize that the mass surveillance/police state measures, regime change wars, and military confrontation of Russia and China begun under Cheney not only failed to stop, but even expanded at faster rates than ever.
In the months before Obama left office in July 2016, the classified Directive 40: National Continuity Policy was enacted creating a line of “Devolution authority” for all branches of the government to a “duplicate chain of individuals secreted outside Washington available in a catastrophic emergency”. Days prior to Trump’s inauguration, Federal Continuity Directive 1 was issued to transfer authority to military forces who could be used to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”
The Importance of Knowing This History
There are very clearly two diametrically opposing methods of analyzing, and solving the existential crisis threatening our world currently: Multipolar or Unipolar.
While Russia and China represent a multipolar/pro-nation state vision driven by large scale development projects that benefit all- rich and poor alike exemplified by the New Silk Road, Polar Silk Road, Space Silk Road and now Health Silk Road, something much darker is being promoted by the same financial oligarchy that owns both right and left sides of the deep state coin. These later forces have provably positioned themselves to take control of western governments under crisis conditions and are not afraid to use every weapon in their arsenal to destroy their perceived enemies… including bioweaponry. This latter uncomfortable reality was asserted quite candidly by leading officials of Iran and even the Chinese Foreign Ministry just weeks ago.
Admittedly, whether or not the current coronavirus pandemic is a bioweapon is not yet fully proven (although growing body of evidence asserts that it is, as seen here and here and here and here). What we know for certain are the following facts:
Numbers are being systematically misrepresented to convey much greater rates of death vs infections as dozens of leading medical experts have proven. Contaminated test kits have started showing up in the UK on March 30 and countless false results are showing up since covid test kits are often not differentiating between covid-19 and the typical coronavirus strains of the flu that average between 7-14% of flu cases every year. This doesn’t mean that COVID-19 should not be taken seriously, but only that the reported numbers are being artificially falsified to generate heightened panic.
The COVID-19 Task Force at London’s Imperial College has been found to be the singular source of the false “left” vs “right” debate poisoning the west’s response to the pandemic. Teams working out of this British Intelligence nexus have generated BOTH the “do-nothing-and-wait-until-natural-resistance-evolves” herd immunity theory while simultaneously creating the “shut everything down one-size-fits-all” doomsday models being used by the WHO, UN, and leading Deep State assets like Michael Bloomberg, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates and George Soros. In case you doubt the influence of the Imperial College on world policy, a March 17 New York Timesarticle described them in the following terms: “With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.”
Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb’s February 2020 research demonstrated conclusively that DARPA had received funding in tandem with Fort Detrick since 2017 on genetic modification of novel coronaviruses (with a focus on bats) as well as the development of never before used DNA and mRNA vaccines which change the structure of DNA both for an individual and potentially for a whole race.
Lastly, and most importantly, the pre-9/11 military exercises were not merely hypothetical scenarios but exercises which led directly into a new “Pearl Harbor” that modified the behaviour of Americans under terror, panic and misinformation like nothing ever seen before. The parallels to today’s coronavirus outbreak cannot be missed for anyone who has taken a serious look at the strange case of the Event 201 Global Pandemic Exercise on October 19, 2019 in New York. Event 201 was sponsored by the Michael Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and World Economic Forum which ran simulations under the “hypothetical” scenario of a novel coronavirus pandemic killing 60 million people. Reviewing just one of Event 201’s many recordings openly available on their official site features some very disturbing parallels to the events unfolding today:
Unipolar Martial Law or Multipolar Marshall Plan?
As I outlined in my previous paper, the mass-panic generated by COVID-19 has created a 9/11-situation with the expected police state laws being passed under the radar of many people who would normally be paying attention to such things. One of the most dangerous measures enacted involved a classified bill in February which formally mandates the head of NORTHCOM (who is also the head of NORAD) to become acting President of the United States under conditions of Martial Law, un-governability of the executive branch or general chaos in America. This later scenario is not terribly unlikely considering the danger of a financial blowout of the banking system combined with economic lockdowns of the west.
China and Russia both understand the nature of the game and both nations have acted responsibly in dealing with the outbreak of Coronavirus with China’s successful containment having won seven consecutive days of no new cases. It is important that unlike the remedies promoted by London’s Imperial College, neither Russia or China have totally shut down their nations, but have rather kept their economies alive by selecting methods for selective quarantines and lockdowns (China only locked down 15 nations plus Wuhan while the remaining 95% of their economy continued to produces and support the recovering component).
We know that President Trump has resisted the pressure by Deep State Experts to shut down America and has stated so repeatedly, but up until his recent conversations with Xi Jinping and Putin, there were very few options available to him beyond those proposed by Dr. Cauci, the Green New Dealing Dems or “bailout everything” monetarists around Mnuchin and Kudlow.
Now that China and Russia have begun sending vital medical equipment to America as part of the Health Silk Road (over the screams of neocons and neoliberal technocrats like), a new possibility for a cure has presented itself. If Trump acts decisively with courage and intelligence, there is still a chance that sovereign nation states may yet stay in the drivers’ seat and use this crisis as an opportunity to force through a debt jubilee, banking reform and new Bretton Woods emergency conference to establish a foundation for a new just economic system. If Trump is unsuccessful in this task, it is more than a little scary to think about what hell will beset the world in the coming months and years.
Scientist Dr Shiva Ayyadurai says there is “no real critical thinking” in academia anymore as professors are “following the money” when it comes to climate science.
President Donald Trump recently proclaimed April 3rd “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A,” a national day to “celebrate Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”
The proclamation called upon “all government officials, educators, volunteers, and all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”
This was not the first such proclamation. For 42 years presidents from both parties have proclaimed a national day to honor Rabbi Schneerson.
President Barack Obama presents a ceremonial copy of the Education and Sharing Day Proclamation that he issued on March 31, 2015 to a delegation from the American Friends of Lubavitch in the Oval Office, April 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (ObamaWhiteHouse)
What they probably didn’t know is that some of Schneerson’s lesser-known teachings are extremely problematic on a number of levels. Among other things, they help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.
For example, Schneerson taught that non-Jews were “created to serve the Jews.”
To learn about Schneerson and his teachings, read the following article that I wrote six years ago, when Barack Obama played his role in the yearly tribute.
Please note that the information in the article comes largely from Jewish and Israeli sources. A list of the sources used in the article is provided below it.
The main source, Israel Shahak, was a respected Israeli professor who had been praised by Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Edward Said, Columbia Professor and public intellectual; and diverse others.
It is my feeling that all Americans should know the facts reported below. Year after year after year, American citizens are being told to honor Rabbi Schneerson. We need to know what The Rebbe taught, consider the implications for us and for others, and decide for ourselves whether we agree with the annual decree that we celebrate his views.
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Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?
By Alison Wier | CounterPunch | April 7, 2014
If things proceed normally, President Barak Obama will soon proclaim April 11, 2014 “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite the innocuous name, this day honors the memory of a religious leader whose lesser-known teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.
The leader being honored on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic head of a mystical/fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year since 1978, a Presidential Proclamation, often accompanied by a Congressional Resolution (the 1990 one had 219 sponsors), has declared Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of observance.
Congress first passed a Resolution honoring Schneerson in 1975. Three years later a Joint Congressional Resolution called on President Jimmy Carter to proclaim “Education Day, U.S.A.” on the anniversary of Schneerson’s birth. The idea was to set aside a day to honor both education and the alleged educational work of Schneerson and the religious sect he headed up.
Carter, like Congress, dutifully obeyed the Schneerson-initiated resolution, as has every president since. And some individual states are now enacting their own observances of Schneerson’s birthday, with Minnesota and Alabama leading the way.
Schneerson and his movement are an extremely mixed bag.
Schneerson has been praised widely for a public persona and organization that emphasized “deep compassion and insight,” worked to bring many secular Jews “back” into the fold, created numerous schools around the world, and had offered, in the words of the Jewish Virtual Library, “social-service programs and humanitarian aid to all people, regardless of religious affiliation or background.”
However, there is also a less attractive underside often at odds with such public perceptions. And some of the more extreme parts of Schneerson’s teachings – such as that Jews are a completely different species than non-Jews, and that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews – have been largely hidden, it appears, even from many who consider themselves his followers.
As we will see, such views profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians living – and dying – under Israeli occupation and military invasions.
Who was Rabbi Schneerson?
Schneerson lived from 1902 to 1994 and oversaw the growth of what is now the largest Jewish organization in the world. The religious movement he led is known as “Chabad-Lubavitch,” (sometimes just called “Lubavitch” or “Chabad,” the name of its organizational arm). Schneerson was the seventh and final Lubavitcher “Rebbe” (sacred leader). He is often simply called “the Rebbe.”
Founded in the late 1700s and originally based in the Polish-Russian town of Lubavitch, it is the largest of about a dozen forms of “Hasidism,” a version of Orthodox Judaism connected to mysticism, characterized by devotion to a dynastic leader, and whose adherents often wear distinctive clothing. (Spellings of these terms can vary; Hasid is also written as Hassid, Chasid, etc.)
There is an extreme cult of personality focused on Schneerson himself. Some followers consider him the Messiah, and Schneerson himself reportedly sometimes implied this was true. Some Lubavitch educators consider him divine, making such claims as, “the Rebbe is actually ‘the essence and being [of God] … he is without limits, capable of effecting anything, all-knowing and a proper object of worshipful prostration.”
While many secular Jews and Jews from other denominations disagree with its actions and theology, Chabad-Lubavitch is generally acknowledged to be a powerful force in Jewish life today. According to a 1994 New York Times report, it is “one of the most influential and controversial forces in world Jewry.”
There are approximately 3,600 Chabad institutions in over 1,000 cities in 70 countries, and 200,000 adherents. Up to a million people attend Chabad services at least once a year. Numerous campuses have such centers and the Chabad website states that hundreds of thousands of children attend Chabad summer camps.
According to the Times, Schneerson “presided over a religious empire that reached from the back streets of Brooklyn to the main streets of Israel and by 1990 was taking in an estimated $100 million a year in contributions.
In the U.S., the Times reports, Schneerson’s “‘mitzvah tanks’ – converted campers that are rolling recruiting stations whose purpose is to draw Jews to the Lubavitch way – roamed streets from midtown Manhattan to Crown Heights. And the Lubavitchers’ Brooklyn-based publishing house claimed to be the world’s largest distributor of Jewish books.”
Non-Jewish souls ‘satanic’
While Chabad sometimes openly teaches that “the soul of the Jew is different than the soul of the non-Jew,” Schneerson’s specific teachings on this subject are largely unknown.
Quite likely very few Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, are aware of Schneerson’s teachings about the alleged deep differences between them – and about how these teachings are applied in the West Bank and Gaza.
Let us look at Schneerson’s words, as quoted by two respected Jewish professors, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (text available online here. This book, praised by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and many others is essential reading for anyone who truly wishes to understand modern day Israel-Palestine. (Brackets in the quotes below are in the translations by Shahak and Mezvinsky.)
Some of Schneerson’s rarely reported teachings:
“The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: “Let us differentiate.” Thus, we do not have a case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior level. Rather, we have a case of “let us differentiate” between totally different species.”
“This is what needs to be said about the body: the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world … The difference in the inner quality between Jews and non-Jews is “so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species.”
“An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”
“As has been explained, an embryo is called a human being, because it has both body and soul. Thus, the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish embryo can be understood.”
“…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created
as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews.”
“The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim.”
“The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”
Most people don’t know about this aspect of Schneerson’s teaching because, according to Shahak and Mezvinsky, such teachings are intentionally minimized, mistranslated, or
hidden entirely.
For example, the quotes above were translated by the authors from a book of Schneerson’s recorded messages to followers that was published in Israel in 1965. Despite Schneerson’s global importance and the fact that his world headquarters is in the U.S., there has never been an English translation of this volume.
Shahak, an Israeli professor who was a survivor of the Nazi holocaust, writes that this lack of translation of an important work is not unusual, explaining that much critical information about Israel and some forms of Judaism is available only in Hebrew.
He and co-author Mezvinsky, who was a Connecticut Distinguished University Professor who taught at Central Connecticut State University, write, “The great majority of the books on Judaism and Israel, published in English especially, falsify their subject matter.”
According to Shahak and Mezvinsky, “Almost every moderately sophisticated Israeli Jew knows the facts about Israeli Jewish society that are described in this book. These facts, however, are unknown to most interested Jews and non-Jews outside Israel who do not know Hebrew and thus cannot read most of what Israeli Jews write about themselves in Hebrew.”
In Shahak’s earlier book, Jewish Religion, Jewish History, he provides a number of examples. In one, he describes a 1962 book published in Israel in a bilingual edition. The Hebrew text was on one page, with the English translation on the facing page.
Shahak describes one set of facing pages in which the Hebrew text of a major Jewish code of laws contained a command to exterminate Jewish infidels: “It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own hands.” The English version on the facing page softened it to “It is a duty to take active measures to destroy them.’”
The Hebrew page then went on to name which “infidels” must be exterminated, adding “may the name of the wicked rot.” Among them was Jesus of Nazareth. The facing page with the English translation failed to tell any of this.
“Even more significant,” Shahak reports, “in spite of the wide circulation of this book among scholars in the English-speaking countries, not one of them has, as far as I know, protested against this glaring deception.”
Praised by Said, Chomsky, etc., Shahak is almost unknown today
This pattern of selective omission, it seems, applies to Shahak himself, whose work is largely unknown to Palestine activists today, even though he was considered a major figure in the struggle against Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and his work was praised by diverse writers.
While Shahak was alive, Noam Chomsky called him “an outstanding scholar,” and said he had “remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.”
Edward Said wrote, “Shahak is a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity … One of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle East.” Said wrote a forward for Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion.
Catholic New Times said: ‘This is a remarkable book …[It] deserves a wide readership, not only among Jews, but among Christians who seek a fuller understanding both of historical Judaism and of modern-day Israel.”
Jewish Socialist stated: “Anyone who wants to change the Jewish community so that it stops siding with the forces of reaction should read this book.”
The London Review of Books called Shahak’s book “remarkable, powerful, and provocative.”
Yet, very few Americans today know of Shahak’s work and the information it contains.
American tax money & Jewish Extremism in Palestine
If they did, it’s hard to believe that Americans would allow $8.5 million per day of their tax money to be given to Israel, where such teachings underlie a powerful minority that is disproportionately influential in governmental actions.
Nor is it likely that a fully informed American public would allow donations to religious institutions in Israel that teach supremacist, sometimes violent doctrines to be tax-deductible in the U.S.
One organization raised over $10 million tax-deductible dollars in the U.S. in 2011 alone – removing money from the U.S. economy and enabling illegal, aggressive Israeli settlements in Palestine. And some of this money went to benefit individuals convicted of murder – including the murderer of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The New York Times obituary on Schneersonreported that Schneerson was “a major political force in Israel, both in the Knesset and among the electorate,” but failed to describe the nature of his impact.
One of a sprinkling of writers willing to publicly discuss Shahak and Mezvinsky’s findings is Allan Brownfeld, who is less reticent. Brownfeld is editor of the American Council for Judaism’s periodical Issues and contributor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
“Rabbi Schneerson always supported Israeli wars and opposed any retreat. In 1974 he strongly opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Suez area. He promised Israel divine favors if it persisted in occupying the land.”
Brownfeld reports that after Schneerson’s death, “[T]housands of his Israeli followers played an important role in the election victory of Binyamin Netanyahu. Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer of Palestinians, was one of them.”
Another such Chabad Hassid is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg (also sometimes written as “Ginzburg” and “Ginsburgh”), who studied under Schneerson in Crown Heights and who heads up a major Chabad institution in the West Bank.
Ginsburg praised Goldstein, the murderer of 29 Palestinians while they were praying, and considers all non-Jews subhuman.
According to author Motti Inbari, Ginsburg “gives prominence to Halachic and Kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect.”
Professor Inbari, an Israeli academic who now teaches in the U.S., writes that Ginsburg’s theological approach continues “certain perceptions that were popular in medieval times.”
“For example,” Inbari writes, “the commandment ‘You shall not murder’ does not apply to the killing of a Gentile, since ‘you shall not murder’ relates to the murder of a human, while for him the Gentiles do not constitute humans.”
Inbari reports, “Similarly, Ginzburg stated that, on the theoretical level, if a Jew requires a liver transplant to survive, it would be permissible to seize a Gentile and take their liver forcefully.”
While the mainstream American press almost never reports this kind of information, an April 26, 1996 article in Jewish Week by Lawrence Cohler reported on Ginsburg’s teachings, including their problematic roots in Jewish texts.
Cohler reported that a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, “called for radically revising Jewish thinking about some Jewish texts on the grounds that scholars such as Rabbi Ginsburgh are far from aberrant in their use of them.”
Cohler quoted Greenberg’s concerns: “‘There’ll be a statement in Talmud… made in circumstances where it’s purely theoretical, because Jews then never had the power to do it,’ he explained. And now, he said, ‘It’s carried over into circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered.’”
A rabbi associated with Ginsburg coauthored a notorious Israeli book, The King’s Torah, which claims that Jewish law at times permits the killing of non-Jewish infants. American donations to the Chabad school Ginsburg heads up, and that published the above book, are tax-deductible in the U.S. Ginsburg, who endorses the book, teaches classes throughout Israel, the U.S. and France.
Such extremism is opposed by the majority of Israelis, and major Jewish religious authorities condemn it, a Chief Rabbi, for example, stating: “’According to the Torah, every man is created in God’s image.”
Israeli military manuals echo extremist teachings: “kill even good civilians”
Israeli military manuals sometimes replicate extremist teachings. For example, a booklet authored by a Chief Chaplain stated, “In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians…” Such teachings by the IDF rabbinate were prominent during Israel’s 2008-9 attack on Gaza that killed 1,400 Gazans, approximately half of them civilians. (The Palestinian resistance killed nine Israelis during this “war.”)
Chicago writer Stephen Lendman has described these teachings, giving a number of examples.
Lendman writes, “In 2007, Israel’s former chief rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, called for the Israeli army to mass-murder Palestinians:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1000. And if they don’t stop after 1000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million.”
Lendman reports that some extremist Israeli rabbis teach that “the ten commandments don’t apply to non-Jews. So killing them in defending the homeland is acceptable, and according to the chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council:
“‘There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them…. A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.’”
Lendman writes, “Rabbi David Batsri called Arabs ‘a blight, a devil, a disaster…. donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all fours. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.’”
Another such rabbi is Manis Friedman, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi inspired by Schneerson who served as the simultaneous translator for a series of Schneerson’s talks. (Friedman is currently dean of a Jewish Studies institute in Minnesota.)
A 2009 article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports, “Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.
“But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.”
“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”
Lendman reports, “Views like these aren’t exceptions. Though a minority, they proliferate throughout Israeli society…”
They also, Lendman notes, work to prevent peace in Israel-Palestine.
Shahak and Mezvinsky note that when the book containing Schneerson’s statements quoted above about Jews and non-Jews was published in Israel, he was allied to the Labor Party and his movement had been provided “many important benefits” from the Israeli government.
In the mid-1970s Schneerson decided that the Labor Party was too moderate and shifted his support to the more right-wing parties in power today. The authors report, “Ariel Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.”
Roots in Some Early Texts
Brownfeld decries the fact that few Americans are properly informed about the fundamentalist movement in Israel “and the theology upon which it is based.”
He notes that Jewish Americans, in particular, are often unaware of the “narrow ethnocentrism which is promoted by the movement’s leading rabbis, or of the traditional Jewish sources they are able to call upon in drawing clear distinctions between the moral obligations owed to Jews and non-Jews.”
Teachings that Jews are superior and gentiles inferior were contained in some of the earliest Hassidic texts, including its classic text, “Tanya,” still taught today.
Brownfeld quotes statements by “the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism,” Rabbi Kook the Elder, and states that these were derived from earlier texts. [Kook, incidentally, was also an early Zionist, who helped push for the Balfour Declaration in England before moving to Palestine. He was the uncle of Hillel Kook, an agent who went by the name “Peter Bergson” and created front groups in the U.S. for a violent Zionist guerilla group that operated in 1930s and ’40s Palestine.]
Brownfeld quotes Kook: “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Brownfeld explains that Kook’s teaching, which he says is followed by leaders of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank, “is based upon the Lurianic Cabbala, the school of Jewish mysticism that dominated Judaism from the late 16th to the early 19th century.”
Shahak and Mezvinsky state, “One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Cabbala is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Cabbala, the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary.”
Again, Shahak and Mezvinsky report that this aspect is often covered up in English-language discussions. Scholarly authors of books about Jewish mysticism and the Lurianic Cabbala, they write, have frequently “willfully omitted reference to such ideas.”
Shahak and Mezvinsky write that it is essential to understand these beliefs in order to understand the current situation in the West Bank, where many of the most militant West Bank settlers are motivated by religious ideologies in which every non-Jew is seen as “the earthly embodiment” of Satan, and according to the Halacha (Jewish law), the term ‘human beings’ refers solely to Jews.”
Israeli author and former chief of Israeli military intelligence Yehoshafat Harkabi touches on this in his 1988 book Israel’s Fateful Hour.
Harkabi writes that while such extremist beliefs are not “widely dominant,” the reality is that “nationalistic religious extremists are by no means a lunatic fringe; many are respected men whose words are widely heeded.”
He reports that the campus rabbi of a major Israeli university published an article in the student newspaper entitled “The Commandment of Genocide in the Torah,” in which he implied that those who have a quarrel with Jews “ought to be destroyed, children and all.” Harkabi writes that a book by another rabbi “explained that the killing of a non-Jew is not considered murder.”
Brownfeld writes, “Although messianic fundamentalists constitute a relatively small portion of the Israeli population [most Israeli settlers are motivated by the subsidized lifestyle US tax money to Israel provides], their political influence has been growing. If they have contempt for non-Jews, their hatred for Jews who oppose their views is even greater.”
Brownfeld cites the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had started to make peace with the Palestinians, writing that it was just one “in a long line of murders of Jews who followed a path different from that ordained by rabbinic authorities.” Brownfeld reports that Shahak and Mezvinsky “cite case after case, from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.”
The authors report, “It was usual in some Hasidic circles until the last quarter of the nineteenth century to attack and often to murder Jews who had reform religious tendencies…”
They quote a long article by Israeli writer Rami Rosen, “History of a Denial,” published by Ha’aretz Magazine in 1996. This article, which cannot be found online, at least in English, is also cited in the bookBrother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination, by Israeli professor Ehud Sprinzak.
In his Ha’aretz article Rosen reported: “A check of main facts of the [Jewish] historiography of the last 1500 years shows that the picture is different from the one previously shown to us. It includes massacres of Christians; mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus that usually took place on Purim; cruel murders within the family; liquidation of informers, often done for religious reasons by secret rabbinical courts, which issued a sentence of ‘pursuer’ and appointed secret executioners; assassinations of adulterous women in synagogues and/or the cutting of their noses by command of the rabbis.”
While Rosen’s article may seem shocking, in reality, it simply shows that members of the Jewish population, like members of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and diverse other populations, have at times committed atrocities, sometimes allegedly in the name of their religion. The difference, as Shahak and Mezvinsky point out, is that such information is largely covered up in the U.S. Such cover-ups, however, don’t make facts go away. They merely bury them, where they smolder and at times eventually lead to exaggerated perceptions.
U.S. media rarely report that some extremist Israeli settlers are intensely hostile to Christians, and in one instance threatened peace activists who came to the West Bank to participate in nonviolent demonstrations, “We killed Jesus and we’ll kill you, too.” There is also a record of official hostility. For example, a few years ago an Israeli mayor ordered all New Testaments to be rounded up and burned.
Schneerson’s “schools”
While Schneerson is honored on national “Education” days, the reality is that the elementary schools he created often failed to teach children “basic reading, writing, spelling, math, science and history,” according to a graduate.
In his article “National Education Day and the Education I Never Had,” Chaim Levin reports on his experience at the Chabad school “Oholei Torah” (Educational Institute Oholei Menachem) in Crown Heights, New York – the site of Chabad’s world headquarters:
“I have profound respect for the late Rebbe and his legacy. However, I remember very clearly those talks that [Schneerson] gave – the ones we studied every year in elementary school about the unimportance of ‘secular’ (non-religious, formal) education, and the great importance of only studying limmudei kodesh (holy studies). As a result of this attitude, thousands of students were not taught anything other than the Bible throughout our years attending Chabad institutions.”
The goal of such schools, Levin writes, was to produce “schluchim,” missionaries who would promote Chabad all over the world.
Meanwhile, he notes, “Failure to provide basic formal education cripples children within Chabad communities. We cannot ignore the harm done…” Levin writes, “Until this day, Oholei Torah and many other Chabad schools — particularly schools for boys and a few for girls in Crown Heights and in some other places — do not provide basic formal education.”
Education and Sharing Day 2014
In his 2000 article, Brownfeld writes that Shahak and Mezvinsky’s book should be “a wake-up call “to Americans, particularly Jewish supporters of Israel.”
Fourteen years later, however, very few people are aware of these books and their powerful information, and U.S. tax money continues to flow to Israel. The main author, Israel Shahak, is now dead, as is Edward Said; Noam Chomsky rarely, if ever, mentions him; and Shahak’s co-author, Norton Mezvinsky (uncle of Chelsea Clinton’s husband), is a member of a Lubavitch congregation in New York.
In many ways, little seems to have changed since 1994, when Congressmen Charles Schumer, Newt Gingrich, and others introduced legislation to bestow on Schneerson the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill passed both Houses by unanimous consent, honoring Schneerson for his “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”
And in two weeks, Americans will be officially called on to observe a day that honors Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the Lubavitcher movement.
That is, unless masses of people contact their Congressional representatives to demand a whole new direction: a “National Education and Sharing Day” that honors an individual who values education, and who believes that all people – in the words of the Declaration of Independence – are created equal.
Works Cited
“About Chabad-Lubavitch.” Judaism, Torah and Jewish Info – Chabad Lubavitch. N.p., n.d. Web.
Barillas, Martin. “US Court Finds That Chabad Can Sue for the Return of Precious Archives Held by Russia.” The Cutting Edge News. N.p., 23 June 2008. Web.
Blau, Uri. “From New York to Hebron: The American Treasury’s Support for Jewish Settlements in the West Bank.” Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Harvard University, 26 Sept. 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
Brownfeld, Allan C. “Book Review: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Mar. 2000: 105-06. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Estrin, Daniel. “The King’s Torah: A Rabbinic Text or a Call to Terror?” Haaretz.com. N.p., 22 Jan. 2010. Web.
Friedman, Manis. “Ask the Rabbis // How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” Moment Magazine. N.p., May-June 2009. Web.
Goldman, Ari L. “Rabbi Schneerson Led A Small Hasidic Sect To World Prominence.” New York Times 13 June 1994, US Edition ed., N.Y./Region sec.: n. pag. Print.
Group, ISM Media. “Swedish Human Rights Worker Viciously Attacked by Jewish Extremists in Hebron.” International Solidarity Movement. N.p., 18 Nov. 2006. Web.
Heilman, Samuel C., and Menachem Friedman. The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2012. Print.
Inbari, Motti. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Albany: State U of New York, 2009. Print. Translated by Shaul Vardi
Lendman, Stephen. “Religious Fundamentalism in Israel.” OpEdNews. N.p., 12 Aug. 2009. Web.
Levin, Chaim. “National Education Day and the Education I Never Had.” The Huffington Post. N.p., 04 Apr. 2012. Web.
Likshin, Martin I. “Chabad Messianism.” My Jewish Learning. N.p., 17 Jan. 2002. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Mezvinsky, Norton, and Israel Shahak. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. London: Pluto, 2015. Print.
Novak, David. “The Man-Made Messiah.” First Things. InstituInstitute on Religion and Public Lifete on Religion and Public Life, 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
Odenheimer, Natan. “The Kabbalist Who Would Be King of a New Jewish Monarchy in Israel.” The Forward. N.p., 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. (Article on Rabbi Ginsburgh published in 2016)
Shahak, Israel, and Norton Mezvinsky. “Full Text of “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”.” Full Text of “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”. Archive.org, n.d. Web.
Sprinzak, Ehud. Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. New York, NY: Free, 1999. Print.
The Tanya of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Elucidated by Rabbi Yosef WinebergPublished and Copyrighted by Kehot Publication Society. “The Tanya Chapter 1.” Chabad.org. N.p., n.d. Web.
Torossian, Ronn. “The First Jewish Start-Up Nation ? Chabad: Marketing Genius.” Jewocity.com. N.p., 07 June 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
American control of Iran began in 1941 when the United States provided military aid to allow the British to invade Iran to seize its oil. Britain could no longer pay Iran royalties on oil production, so decided to steal it.
The British joined the Soviets to invade and partition Iran, in the same manner the Germans had joined the Soviets to partition Poland in 1939.
The United States pretended it was neutral in this conquest, but massive American military aid made this invasion possible. During the World War II, Iran was occupied by some 30,000 American troops.
Americans filled key positions in Iran’s government, so the nation functioned as a colony of the American empire.
After the war ended, most American troops were withdrawn, but thousands of soldiers and civilians remained to advise the Iranian government, military, and police to support the dictator they had installed.
_________________________
With anti-statist paranoia and acts of vandalism now part of the coronavirus crisis in the UK, in one outrageous video sent to me by a friend (I will not produce it, due to the responsibility to prevent the spread of false information) a British man denounced the virus as a hoax. What is most shocking is that he included (17 years on!) an appeal to the fact the Iraq War was based on lies.
The continued disbelief towards any government statements and guidance shows, despite attempts to put Tony Blair’s shame to rest or somehow apologize for his supposed mistakes, the grave injustice of the Iraq War has still not been resolved. Instead, the failure to punish Blair sent the message that deception and conspiracy are the rule rather than the exception for the statists, with Tony Blair only being an example of what the British state continues to be. The image of the craven, dishonourable, lying villain who once led the Labour Party has only grown more in people’s minds every year Blair continuously eluded punishment. Rulers believed they ruled over goldfishes, but the citizens have not forgotten anything. On the contrary, their suspicions have only grown to target ever more politicians.
It is the role of the state to calm the people, to possess agencies and departments that offer the most impartial and well-intentioned information. Throughout the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, there is no doubt that the British government has indeed been true to its word. Its guidance has been appropriate, its measures aimed genuinely to save the resources of the National Health Service. However, it is not enough to tell the truth sometimes. If the rages of the citizenry are to be appeased, the government must refrain from deception at all times. If it can’t, its downfall must be witnessed by that same citizenry or their distrust will only increase and their cooperation will decrease.
It is a fact that the British government has not sufficiently apologized for the 2003 War on Iraq, nor offered sufficient compensation to its victims. Its supposed investigation of the crime in the Chilcot Inquiry is considered to be a farce by anyone remotely interested in seeing the issue addressed properly. The criminals even continue to be celebrated and followed dearly by other politicians, and their criminal policy continues to remain in effect the policy of the state as the “war on terror” still fails again and again year after year, decade after decade, civilian death after civilian death. That continued trail of terrorism and destruction is, as far as Britain’s involvement is concerned, still the fault of Tony Blair and other staunch pro-US individuals in the British political scene.
The best way to put an end to the distrust towards the state, both at home and abroad, is to clean the stain of dishonour – to sacrifice our former great statesman for the greater good of stability and order. Clearly, as a man who took great leaps and risks in the interests of national security, Blair himself would be the first to support the proposition as follows. The appropriate solution has already been trialled by the British Parliament in the case of other citizens whose terrorism was undeniable. Tony Blair and the others of his former cabinet should be quickly stripped of British citizenship, deported to Iraq as terrorists, and forced to face justice in the courts in that country. Once this selfless sacrifice for our country clears up our image around the world and actually protects us (unlike the pointless loss of so many brave soldiers) Americans may be then inspired to deport George W. Bush and other selfless patriots who are so willing to give their lives for the cause of national security.
In the interests of long-term internal stability, there needs to be a proper acknowledgment by the British state that the 2003 War on Iraq was an unprecedented crime based entirely on lies and deceit, and its criminal perpetrators must be investigated by an appropriately empowered committee and brought to justice. As well as continuously infuriating Muslims across the world, our inexplicable failure to make Tony Blair pay the price has the potential to turn entire generations of British people against the state, as they view almost everything it says with suspicion.
Letting politicians lie with impunity and allowing them to wander freely for years afterwards is undoing centuries of accumulated trust in political institutions within only decades, and is far more damaging to society than allowing individual soldiers to get away with war crimes. It sets the state against the people in a way that is very difficult to resolve. In the end, it entails elevated risks to government employees and others forced to act on the front lines as the public face of liars despite also being victims of these liars. One cannot even deliver the most basic policies without facing constant distrust, and the constant and increasingly common refrain that the government is lying. Such distrust ultimately leads the government employees to sympathize more with the disgruntled citizenry and less with their employer, too, creating many hairline fractures running to the very foundations of what the state actually is.
At one point or another, it is the job of a state to be pragmatic. As with this virus, the state must take decisions that serve a greater order and a greater good, and not necessarily what is comforting. Tony Blair is not useful in the UK, and would be a useful agent for Britain’s safety if placed on trial in Iraq. Whatever the outcome, it would help protect the lives of all British people around the world, who would be at decreased risk of terrorist activity. It would help restore the trust British people have in their government, and would deflate wild and potentially harmful conspiracy theories. It would function as a genuine apology for what we did, and there would be no doubt that there are consequences for abusing one’s office to tell lies.
The room inside the old crematorium of the Auschwitz Main Camp that was a morgue according to original war-time plans is said to have been used as a homicidal gas chamber between late 1941/early 1942 and the first half of 1943. It would seem that operating a homicidal gas chamber requires the installation of gas-tight, panic-proof doors to keep both the poisonous fumes and the victims safely inside. While there is no evidence in the extant documentation pointing to the existence of any such doors, orthodox historiography points to witness testimony indicating that such doors were in fact in place. A closer scrutiny of war-time blueprints reveals that the walls of this morgue which must have supported these doors were extremely thin, hence unable to support the installation of massive steel doors.
The Impetus for This Paper
On November 20, 2019, I received the following email:
“Hello, my name is Federico Bussone, I’m from Italy. I think I have discovered an important weak point in the mainstream official story of the Auschwitz Main Camp crematorium. As far as I know, this weak point has never been highlighted by any revisionist, and so I would like to share with you my ‘discovery.’
We have to look at the original blueprint of the Crematorium I of April 10 1942 (but also the one from November 30 1940).
In both these plans, the wall of the left (short) side of the alleged gas chamber, that is, the wall with the entrance door, is REALLY THIN, it probably measures no more than 15 centimetres. As an architect, I understand well that such a partition could only have served as a dividing wall. It could have never withstand the stresses produced by the opening and closing of a heavy steel door. Let alone the blows and the pressure towards the outside exerted by the panicked prisoners.
I would like to emphasize that this type of wall, built of small solid bricks bound by mortar, became quite resistant only when built in a double row. In a single row, as it is in our case, it can be easily demolished with a little sledgehammer by a single worker, for example during house renovation.
It seems to me that this important fact has not been grasped so far. For example, the 3D models by Eric Hunt have the same (greater) thickness for all walls. The same for other drawings I have found in revisionist publications etc.
I hope this mail will be helpful!
Best regards.
Federico”
The Orthodox Narrative
After the former Polish military barracks south of the Polish city of Oswiecim had been converted into a concentration camp by German authorities following the Polish defeat in September 1939, the old munitions bunker on the grounds of that camp was converted into a crematorium for the incineration of the remains of deceased or executed inmates. In war-time and post-war literature, this building is alternately referred to as either the old crematorium or Crematorium I. The morgue of this facility is said to have been converted into a homicidal gas chamber subsequent to an initial test gassing conducted in the camp’s gaol in September of 1941.1 This was asserted already two months prior to the end of World War Two by a combined Polish-Soviet investigative commission, which stated the following about this in its report:2
“In early 1941, a crematorium, designated as Crematorium #1, was started up in the Auschwitz camp. […] Next to this crematorium there was a gas chamber, which had, at either end, gas-tight doors with peep-holes and in the ceiling four openings with hermetic closures through which the ‘Ziklon’ [sic] for the killing of the persons was thrown. Crematorium I operated until March 1943 and existed in that form for two years.”
In preparation for the 1947 Polish show trial against former Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss, Polish engineer Dr. Roman Dawidowski compiled an expert report on evidence supporting homicidal gassing claims at Auschwitz, where we read on this topic:3
“One now [in late 19414] began to poison people regularly with Zyklon B and to use for that purpose the Leichenhalle (morgue) of Crematorium I […]. This chamber […] on both sides had a gas-tight door.”
Jan Sehn, the Polish judge who led the investigation leading up to the Polish post-war show trials against former members of the German Auschwitz camp staff, wrote the following about this in his 1960 book on Auschwitz:5
“The mortuary (Leichenkeller)[6] of the first Oswiecim crematorium […] was fitted with two gas-proof doors.”
Claims about gas-tight doors in that morgue originate from witness testimony. Among them is Stanisław Jankowski, who stated regarding the doors in that room in a deposition October 3, 1980:7
“The two thick wooden doors of the room, one in the side wall, the other in the end wall, had been made gas-tight.”
The post-war autobiography by Rudolf Höss, written while in Polish custody awaiting his execution, contains little information about the doors of this alleged gas chamber, only that they must have been very sturdy, because:8
“When the powder [sic; Zyklon B] was thrown in[to the gas chamber], there were cries of ‘Gas!’, then a great bellowing, and the trapped prisoners [Russian PoWs to be gassed] hurled themselves against both the doors. But the doors held.”
Höss moreover speaks repeatedly of the doors being “screwed” shut,9 which points to a door with massive steel fixtures not found on usual doors.
In his post-war declaration writing in the summer of 1945, former SS man Pery Broad was a little more specific about the doors of this claimed homicidal gas chamber, making it clear that this was a heavy, gas-tight, panic-proof door:10
“Suddenly the door was closed. It had been made tight with rubber and secured with iron fittings. Those inside heard the heavy bolts being secured. They were screwed to with screws, making the door air-tight. A deadly, paralysing terror spread among the victims. They started to beat upon the door, in helpless rage and despair they hammered with their fists upon it.”
While interrogated in preparation of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, defendant Hans Stark made the following statements in his deposition about the doors of that room:11
“As early as the autumn of 1941 gassings were carried out in a room of the small crematorium, the room having been fitted for that purpose. It could take in some 200–250 people, was higher than a normal living room, had no windows, and only one door that had been made [gas] tight and had a lock like the door of an air-raid shelter.”
The Current Material Situation
In the fall of 1944, the section of the old crematorium that contained the morgue, the washroom and the laying-out/dissecting room was converted into an air-raid shelter for the SS.12 For this purpose, the former interior walls of that section as well as the walls separating it from the furnace room were changed – I will address this in more detail later – and probably also the doors, as documentation indicates that the shelter’s interior doors were of a “simple” nature,13 hence neither gas-tight nor fragment-proof, as was initially foreseen, nor panic-proof, as would have been required for homicidal purposes.12
Illustration 1: Sign posted outside the old crematorium at the former Auschwitz Main Camp juxtaposing the situation before the building’s conversion to an air-raid shelter (left) to the current situation (right).
In 1947, the freshly established Polish Auschwitz-Museum authorities restructured the building, among other things by removing some of the former air-raid shelter’s internal walls. By so doing they tried to recreate the state as it was before the conversion of this facility to an air-raid shelter. During that process, a number of mistakes were made, among them the removal of a wall which did exist in the pre-shelter era, separating the alleged gas chamber from the adjacent washroom. Only one internal wall was left, which used to separate the washroom from the laying-out/dissecting room. To this very day, this wall has a “simple interior wall” as installed during the conversion to an air-raid shelter.
Only after the collapse of the Communist Eastern Bloc did the Polish Auschwitz authorities start to acknowledge the fact that the facility as presented to visitors today is not an accurate “reconstruction” of the former alleged gas chamber, although the tour guides kept misrepresenting it to visitors. A sign hinting at a few of the inaccuracies of this botched reconstruction was installed near that building only in the early 2000s, see Illustration 1. The wall originally separating the morgue (or “gas chamber”, marked “c” on the plans) from the washroom (marked “b” on the plans) is missing today.
The Revisionist Position
Starting from the assumption, caused by the Auschwitz Museum’s decade-long misrepresentation, that today’s state of the building is an accurate reconstruction of the situation during the war when homicidal gassing are said to have occurred, revisionists highlighted the fact that the extant doors (or the lack thereof) in the claimed gas chamber would never have allowed the claimed mass murder. For instance, Swedish eccentric revisionist Ditlieb Felderer wrote in 1980:14
“The doorposts [of the door separating the alleged gas chamber from the former laying-out/dissecting room] are made of wood, and the door itself is made of wood and glass. The handle and lock are so weak that they keep falling apart. The door opens inwards, into the ‘gas chamber.’ When we asked Mr. T. Szymanski, the (now retired) curator, how it was that the gassees did not just smash the window in this door and escape, he advised us that he had never investigated this door so he could not give us a definite answer!”
Illustration 2: Gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.
Illustration 3: One of the eight wedge locks of a gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.
The wedging of these levers into the lock position could rightly be called “screwed shut”.
The famous 1988 Leuchter Report acknowledged that the current state of the building is not original, “since one wall had been removed,” and therefore did not make any statement about the door currently visible.15 However, at the end of a 1994 article, revisionist Robert Faurisson, ghostwriter of the Leuchter Report, added two images comparing the massive steel door of a US execution gas chamber with the flimsy wooden door with window pane which has been visible in the old crematorium since the wall from the morgue to the washroom had been knocked down in 1947. The caption to the image showing that door reads:16
“One of the three doors of an alleged NS gas chamber for the execution of hundreds of persons at once with Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) (Krematorium I, Auschwitz, Poland, beginning of the 40’s).”
The same illustration with the same misleading caption can be found in the 2000 and 2003 English editions,17 but has been removed in the 2019 edition. It is misleading, because it was well known by the time these books were published that this door was never part of a homicidal gas chamber, even if the Auschwitz tour guides were still claiming this in the 1990s and early 2000s, and some may still be doing it today.
In 2005, the English translation of Carlo Mattogno’s monograph on Krematorium I was published.18 While it contains most of the witness testimony quoted earlier and goes into some detail about the various restructurings this building went through, it does not specifically address the question of the doors presumably installed in that building’s morgue while allegedly used for homicidal purposes.
The same year also saw the first English (and 2nd German) edition of my Lectures on the Holocaust, where I briefly addressed the issue of access doors to the morgue, albeit with a focus on the swing door between the morgue and the furnace room, shown on several war-time floor plans.19 The same emphasis on that swing door, with much more detail, can be found in Eric Hunt’s introductory contribution to C. Mattogno’s 2016 book Curated Lies.20 While this proves that the blueprints do not reflect any outfitting of the morgue for homicidal purposes, it can be argued that such secrecy was in fact intentional, meaning that the floor plans were simply not updated in this regard, in particular regarding the swing door, in order to conceal the criminal changes made.
Extant Documentation
In a long 1998 article, German architect Willy Wallwey, writing under the pen names of Hans Jürgen Nowak and Werner Rademacher, summarized what the extant documentation accessible in various Moscow archives reveals about gas-tight doors offered to, delivered to and installed in the various buildings at Auschwitz.21 Wallwey concluded that the Auschwitz camp authorities did indeed request cost estimates for sturdy, gas-tight, and probably also panic-proof steel doors, but they were never delivered. These doors even had so-called wedge locks used to close them in an air-tight fashion, a closing mechanism that could be called “screwing” the doors shut as described by witnesses, see Illustration 3.22
Illustration 4: Make-shift air-raid-shelter door of Krematorium I made of wood with a thin sheet metal cover, probably built by inmates in the camp’s workshop.
Illustration 5: blueprint of the wall anchor for a frame of a sturdy, gas-tight steel door.
The two existing air-raid-shelter doors made for Krematorium I in 1944 during the building’s conversion to an air-raid shelter are made of wooden planks covered by thin sheet metal, see Illustration 4. Although these doors were probably built by the local inmate workshop, so far no documentation about them has been found. This proves that not everything that was constructed at the Auschwitz Camp left a trace in the documental record, or if it did, that it has survived. Hence, it is conceivable that sturdy gas-tight doors similar to those shown in Illustrations 2f. were in fact delivered to Auschwitz and were subsequently installed there without leaving a documental trace.
The Blueprints
Illustration 6: Inventory plan of Krematorium I, dated April 10, 1942. RGVA, 502-2-146, p. 21.
Below: section enlargement of washroom with adjacent walls, rotated by 90°, with grey circles added to highlight the walls’ width of 15 cm.
While it cannot be ruled out that panic-proof, gas-tight steel doors were indeed delivered to Auschwitz and may have been installed elsewhere, it can be ruled out, based on war-time floor plans, that any such door could have been installed in the relevant door openings of the morgue of Krematorium I.
First, we need to be aware that the frame of a massive wooden or even a steel door designed to withstand a panicking crowd needs to be anchored firmly in the wall. Illustration 5 shows a hoop steel anchor with a so-called dovetail going some 14 cm (5.5 inches) into the wall.22 Needless to say, the wall itself had to be considerably thicker than 14 cm.
Turning to the war-time floor plans of this morgue, we see that the wall separating the morgue from the adjacent washroom and the wall separating it from the furnace room were both very thin: 15 cm, which is the width of a standard brick plus some plaster on both sides of it (see Illustration 6). Hence, these walls consisted only of one row of bricks set lengthwise. The wall separating the morgue from the furnace room consisted of two such walls with a gap of some 30 cm in between (for thermal insulation).
It is not possible to set a steel anchor into bricks. In such a case, bricks have to be removed, and then the anchor placed into a block of cement/concrete. However, since these walls consisted only of one row of bricks – unless they consisted only of a wooden framework of 2-by-5s plus some boards, in which case we need no longer discuss this issue – removing a brick to place an anchor embedded in cement in its stead would have left this chunk of cement held in place by nothing more than the bricks on top and at the bottom of it. Such a chunk would have become loose very quickly. Any forceful shaking of the door would have dislodged those anchors, bent the frame, and made the frame including the door fall out of the wall sooner or later.
In other words, the meager thickness of these walls proves that no sturdy, panic-proof door of any kind could have been installed in them.
The only option left for the traditionalists is to claim that these walls were reinforced to a much thicker width at the very moment the morgue is said to have been converted into a homicidal gas chamber, meaning in September 1941. Yet no evidence exists for this neither in the documental record nor in witness testimonies known to me.
[1] The currently accepted orthodox narrative of the so-called first gassing is succinctly summarized by Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1938-1945, pp. 84-87. See the critique of this narrative by Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing. Rumor and Reality, 3rd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016.
[2] Gosudarstvenni Archiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow, 7021-108-15, pp. 2f. Subsequently abbreviated as GARF.
[3] Archiwum Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu Instytutu Pamieci Narodowej (Archive of the Central Commission of Inquiry into the Crimes against the Polish People – National Memorial), Warsaw, NTN, 93; subsequently abbreviated as AGK. The report entered the files of the Höss trial in its Volume 11. The quoted passage is on pp. 26f.
[4] Danuta Czech set the date of the first gassing in that morgue to September 16, 1941; see op. cit. (note 1), pp. 89f.
[5] Jan Sehn , Oświęcim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau) Concentration camp, Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warsaw 1961, p. 125.
[6] That should be Leichenhalle, as it was above-ground, while “Keller” means basement/cellar.
[7] J.-C. Pressac , Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989, p. 124.
[8] Jadwiga Bezwińska, Danuta Czech (eds.), KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, Howard Fertig, New York, 1984, p. 93.
[9] Ibid., pp. 96, 115, 134.
[10] Ibid., p. 176.
[11] Minutes of interrogation of Hans Stark , Cologne, April 23, 1959. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, ref. AR-Z 37/58 SB6, p. 947.
[12] This results from a letter dated August 26, 1944, by Heinrich Josten, head of the Auschwitz air-raid protection department, to the camp commandant, Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennii Vojennii Archiv (Russian State War Archive), Moscow, 502-1-401, p. 34. Subsequently abbreviated as RGVA.
[13] RGVA, 502-2-147, p. 12a.
[14] Ditlieb Felderer, “Auschwitz Notebook: Doors & Portholes,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 1, No. 4 (winter 1980), pp. 365-370, here p. 366.
[15] Fred Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2017, p. 47
[16] Ernst Gauss (ed.), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994, p. 109.
[17] Ernst Gauss (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, Ala., 2000, p. 143; Germar Rudolf (ed.), ibid., Chicago, 2003, p. 143.
[18] Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, Ill., 2005 (now available in its 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016).
[19] Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, Ill., 2005, p. 255.
[20] Carlo Mattogno, Curated Lies: Auschwitz Museum’s Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016, pp. 30-32. Similar in my book The Chemistry of Auschwitz, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2017, p. 104.
[21] Hans Jürgen Nowak, Werner Rademacher, “‘Gasdichte’ Türen in Auschwitz,” Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung 2(4) (1998), pp. 248-260.
[22] RGVA 502-1-354-8; July 9, 1942; see Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2019, p. 326.
When it comes to saving American lives, sanctions are not an obstacle to the provision of life-saving medical equipment. Ramping up sanctions on struggling Iran is okay however – which goes to show the US price tag on human life.
It was a sight that warmed the heart of even the most cynical American opponent of Vladimir Putin’s Russia—a giant An-124 aircraft, loaded with boxes of desperately needed medical supplies, being offloaded at JFK Airport. When President Trump spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart on March 31, he mentioned America’s need for life-saving medical supplies, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. Two days later the AN-124 arrived in New York.
As the aircraft was being unloaded, however, it became clear that at least some of the equipment being offloaded had been delivered in violation of existing US sanctions. Boxes clearly marked as containing Aventa-M ventilators, produced by the Ural Instrument Engineering Plant (UPZ), could be seen. For weeks now President Trump has made an issue about the need for ventilators in the US to provide life-saving care for stricken Americans.
There was just one problem—the manufacturer of the Aventa-M, UPZ, is a subsidiary of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) which, along with its parent holding company ROSTEC, has been under US sanctions since 2014. Complicating matters further is the fact that the shipment of medical supplies was paid in part by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Russian sovereign wealth fund which, like ROSTEC, was placed on the US lending blacklist in 2014 following Russia’s intervention in Crimea. Half of the Russian aid shipment was paid for by the US State Department, and the other half by RDIF.
According to a State Department spokesperson, the sanctions against RDIF do not apply to purchases of medical equipment. KRET, however, is in the strictest SDN (Specially Designated Persons) sanctions list, which means US citizens and permanent residents are prohibited from doing business with it. So while the letter of the sanctions may not have been violated, the spirit certainly has been.
One only need talk to the embattled Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, to understand the difficulty in trying to purchase much-needed medical equipment during a global pandemic where everyone else is trying to do the same. New York has been competing with several other states to purchase much-needed ventilators from China. “It’s like being on eBay”, Cuomo recently told the press, with 50 states bidding against one another, driving the price up. The issue became even more complicated when the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, entered the bidding war. “They big-footed us”, Cuomo said, driving the price per ventilator up to $25,000. “We’re going broke.”
Cuomo estimates that New York will need upwards of 40,000 ventilators to be able to handle the influx of stricken patients when the outbreak hits its peak. At the moment, New York has 17,000 ventilators available—including 2,500 on order from China—and Cuomo doesn’t expect any more. “We’re on our own.” Plans are in place to begin imposing a triage system to prioritize ventilator availability if and when the current stockpile is exhausted. These plans include the issuance of an emergency waiver that permits health care providers to take a patient off a ventilator to make it available for another patient deemed to be more “viable”—that is, who has a greater expectation of surviving the disease.
Cuomo’s predicament is being played out around the world, in places like Italy, Spain—and Iran, where the outbreak of coronavirus has hit particularly hard. The difference, however, is that while the US, Italy and Spain are able to scour the global market in search of life-saving medical supplies, Iran is not. US sanctions targeting the Iranian financial system, ostensibly imposed to prevent “money laundering” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command, which has been heavily sanctioned by the US over the years, have made it virtually impossible for Iran to pay for humanitarian supplies needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
As bad as it is for Governor Cuomo, at least he can enter a bidding war for medical supplies. Iran can’t even get its foot in the door, and it is costing lives. Making matters worse, at a time when the international community is pleading for the US to ease sanctions so Iran can better cope with an outbreak that is taking a life every ten minutes, the US instead doubled down, further tightening its death grip on the Iranian economy.
The global coronavirus pandemic will eventually end, and when it does there will be an accounting for how nations behaved. Nations like Russia and China have been repeatedly vilified in the US media for any number of reasons—even the Russian aid shipment containing the sanctioned ventilators has been dismissed as a “propaganda ploy.” What, then, do you call the US’ blatant disregard for select human lives?
The callous indifference displayed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials to the suffering of the Iranian people by increasing sanctions at a time when the situation cries out for them to be lifted in order to save lives, when contrasted to the ease in which US sanctions on Russia are ignored when life-saving medical equipment is needed, drives home the point that, as far as the US is concerned, human life only matters when it is an American one. That might play well among American voters (it shouldn’t), but for the rest of the world it is a clear sign that hypocrisy, not humanitarianism, is the word that will define the US going forward.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
The Washington imperialists and the corporate media are manipulating the narrative around Covid-19 in the same ways that they’ve controlled discourse around the comparably dramatic crisis of 9/11. Just like how the Bush White House immediately concluded (based upon still dubious evidence) that Osama Bin Laden was the one who had directed the attacks in order to justify starting the war in Afghanistan, and like how the Bush team campaigned to associate Saddam Hussein with 9/11 to justify invading Iraq, Covid-19 is being weaponized as a war propaganda tool. And now the designated enemies are China, Iran, Russia, and the other countries which threaten U.S. hegemony.
As was also the case after 9/11, the imperialist narrative managers are using McCarthyism, censorship, and intensive demonization of the designated enemies to hide the growing amount of evidence that the U.S. is connected to the crisis.
The evidence is in favor of the virus having originated in the U.S., not China
Like how the CIA conspired with Saudi Arabia to cover up details about 9/11 which contradicted the official Washington narrative, or how the media has ignored the evidence of Mossad foreknowledge of 9/11, the U.S. State Department and major media outlets are working to conceal and deflect from the questions about America’s potential responsibility for the virus.
There have been many events in the last year that suggest the U.S. brought the virus to China, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute in Fort Detrick was closed down in July 2019. Then in October, a team of U.S. troopers who had trained near Fort Detrick traveled to Wuhan, staying a mere 300 meters from the seafood market where the virus spread from. If these troops were deliberately sent there to proliferate the virus, it wouldn’t be unprecedented in U.S. warfare; Washington has a history of transferring viruses to use as diplomatic cargo for secret military programs.
These coincidences, while not necessarily compelling evidence for the bioweapon hypothesis on their own, are accompanied by solid evidence that Covid-19 started in the United States. As Larry Romanoff has written, “the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere. It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the ‘tree trunk’ of all the varieties.” Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University, has helped support the hypothesized link between the U.S. troops and the original Wuhan outbreak by concluding that “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace.”
But enough with my hesitant language about how it’s supposedly still unclear whether the virus came from America. Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian has formally accused Washington of bringing the virus to China, saying “When did patient zero begin in U.S? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be U.S. army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! U.S. owe us an explanation!” Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali has made a similar statement about Covid-19’s origins: “Instead of leveling false accusations against China and Iran, U.S. officials should respond to international demands regarding its role in creating and spreading the coronavirus and the continuation of its crimes against the Iranian people by keeping in place the economic sanctions.”
Was Covid-19 engineered in an American laboratory? While a recent study has provided evidence against this, the scientific debate over whether it was artificially created will continue to go on. Plus, bioweapons don’t even have to be artificially created-just look at all of the already existing diseases that U.S. biowarfare operations have brought to Cuba. And even if the virus came from the U.S. to China by accident, it’s certain that China is not the country where the virus came from.
Painting China’s response to the virus as “incompetent” and “authoritarian”
Anti-Chinese propaganda often takes the form of the Western media observing benign events in China or minor slip-ups in Chinese policy, and twisting them into outrage stories. So was the case for the imperialist propaganda machine’s representation of the story of Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who mistakenly spread a false message on WeChat and was subsequently warned about it by Chinese authorities. The government then paid tribute to Li for helping combat the virus and retracted their warning against him after his death, but disingenuous pundits used the incident to score rhetorical points in the information war against China.
The government’s response to Wenliang didn’t have to do with his public revelation of the virus, which was done only a day before the government decided to officially announce that the virus was a problem. Yet it’s been suggested that his decision to speak up about the virus conflicted with the agenda of the government, and that the government had targeted him for his whistleblowing.
This ridiculous distortion of events was used to justify the Western media’s deeply unfair overall portrayal of the Chinese response to the virus, as represented by this paragraph from a recent Vicearticle:
China initially ignored the outbreak that first surfaced in Wuhan in early December, silencing doctors who tried to raise the alarm before eventually enacting a draconian and restrictive lockdown that impacted 50 million people.
Vice, which is one of the outlets that’s been known to promote content under the direct guidance of the U.S. government in recent years, is here engaging in a subtle ploy to associate China’s response to the virus with “authoritarianism.” China’s “draconian restrictive lockdown,” which is another way to say “quarantine,” was entirely necessary and in line with how most other governments have handled the virus. But Vice’s phrasing is meant to reinforce the narratives that China had failed to respond to the virus quickly enough, and that the actions it took against the virus were oppressive and sinister.
The underlying message, which is that those quarantined by China’s government were put in an unusually miserable and repressive state compared to the other quarantined populations around the world, is absurd. Thanks to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, China’s people have had access to universal healthcare during this crisis. They’ve been in a country that’s virtually eradicated poverty. They’ve been able to contact police officers who go shopping for families in need of assistance during the quarantine. This contrasts with capitalist countries like the United States, where the gutted and highly privatized healthcare system is being overwhelmed, the people who’ve lost their jobs during the quarantine are already largely in financial hardship due to neoliberalism, and the police have continued to act as a terrorizing force which frequently shoots innocent people.
Another claim the Vice article makes is that “even the slightest reference to coronavirus or the government’s response was erased” as a result of China’s censorship. This is also misleading. Most of what the censors deleted was people referring to the military games in regards to the virus, likely as a measure for keeping the public from jumping to conclusions too early about America’s potential role in the crisis. They did not go after posts that referenced the severity of the crisis, but rather material that could be harmful to international relations.
This week, the U.S. propaganda machine expanded upon these claims by alleging that China lied about the extent of the virus. Unsurprisingly, the intelligence agents who are cited as sources for this revelation are anonymous. And the Bloomberg reporters who helped break this story didn’t even see the report behind it, instead having the details outlined to them by these mysterious officials. There was no evidence to back up their claims; all they did was craft another headline that reflects the other baseless insinuations from imperialist propagandists.
These charges and mischaracterizations distract from the enormously effective efforts of the CPC in combating the virus. Because of the party’s rapid construction of medical centers and sustained widespread quarantine, the disease has recently been close to obliterated within the country. China has also provided medical resources to numerous countries, a humanitarian act which the mentioned Vice article somehow tries to spin as a bad thing.
The CPC responded as best as was possible for it to, and keeping a spreading pandemic within a country’s border is essentially beyond the powers of any state. So China can’t be accused of letting the virus spread throughout an unnecessary amount of its people (as the U.S. government can certainly be accused of). Nor can China reasonably be accused of “letting” the virus spread globally.
Using McCarthyism and censorship to shut down those who challenge the warmongering claims
Pandemics create a scary kind of political psychology. Similar to the mass fears of terrorism throughout the last two decades, when people feel threatened by a disease they become hostile towards those who step out of the defined parameters for keeping society safe. While those urging people to disregard all of the Covid-19 safety advice are engaging in dangerous misinformation, this fringe and extreme position is being conflated with voicing dissenting views about where the virus came from and which country is responsible.
Headlines about pro-China Covid-19 content being “foreign disinformation” are promoting the perception that it’s wrong to ask the questions I’ve posed throughout this article, or to point out the falsehoods of Western reporting on China’s handling of the virus. It’s making dialogue about the issue harder to have, and it’s giving leverage to the oligarchic censorship engines within the U.S./NATO empire.
Facebook has been deleting posts about the virus to a far more thorough extent than has been the case for China’s censors. At the same time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the BBC, and other entities have joined in on a project called the Trusted News Initiative. TNI partner Noel Curran has said about the project’s goal that “There is a tide of misinformation and bad information, driven mainly through online social platforms, which is threatening to undermine public trust and cause further anxiety for people. This initiative underlines the role of public service media in tackling misinformation head-on and delivering accurate content that audiences can safely rely on.”
It’s an extension of the McCarthyism, censorship, and stigmatization of supposed “fake news” that’s dominated Western politics in recent years. Media hysteria about “Russian interference” after the 2016 election facilitated an unprecedented series of censorship measures from corporations and governments, rationalized by a desire to protect trust in institutions. Amid the last decade’s growing backlash to neoliberalism, the ruling class has been waging a war on dissenting journalism and socialist politics. Now is another opportunity to silence and shame those who challenge imperialist and capitalist narratives.
An example of the emerging hostile atmosphere towards dissent can be found in a recent graphic from Counter Hate UK, which advises people to respond to “Coronavirus misinformation” with the following measures: “Report misinformation to platforms,” “[don’t] reply, share, or quote misinformation,” and “spread official advice” to “drown out fake news.”
This is the psychological weapon that the U.S./NATO empire is using to keep itself on the path of war escalations and internal repression: instilling people with the fear that if they challenge anything the centers of power tell them about the virus, they’ll endanger society. But we need critical thinking and open dissent more than ever during this time. The capitalist ruling class is neglecting the needs of the masses while using the crisis to exacerbate inequality, and we poor and working people need to fight back. We must challenge the narratives which enable the imperialist war campaigns against China and other countries, and we must work to intensify the class struggle.
What seemed to allow this deadly night to descend was that the intellectual patterns that were supposed to be in charge of things, that should comprehend the threat and lead the fight against it, were paralyzed.
Later in the day on 9/11/2001 a third building, WTC Building 7, descended at nearly free-fall speed with such perfect symmetry as to serve as a textbook example of excellence in prepared demolition. The official reason for the collapse of the 47 story, steel-framed skyscraper was given in 2008 by Shyam Sunder of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): “WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings.” It had taken seven years for NIST to fabricate a tortured videotaped explanation obviously out of sync with the actual collapse. The explanation reeked so visibly of scientific fraud that demonstrating that Building 7 was professionally wired for destruction became seen as the factor that could best be used to expose the larger web of lies surrounding the 9/11 events.
In years following 9/11, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was formed, as were similar truth-seeking organizations for pilots, lawyers, scientists, firefighters, religious leaders, and many more (even cops). But mainstream journalism has been silent, dismissive or openly hostile to individuals and groups questioning the official account. The now jaded epithet of “conspiracy theorist”, a 1960s invention of the CIA, soon gave way to the insults of “truther”, and even “troofer”. But perhaps the best indicator of governmental/media defense of the preposterous but official account of 9/11 may be seen in a March 8, 2010 Washington Post editorial that threatened a prominent Japanese politician and his entire Party for suggesting controlled demolition as cause for the 9/11 collapses, and that Japan should have its own independent investigation. The Post, long linked to the CIA, used in its threat identical derogatory language seen widely in attacks on people and groups aware of the physical impossibilities inherent in the government’s explanation: “bizarre”, “half-baked”, “intellectually bogus”, “lunatic fringe”, “fact-averse”, as if the terminology had derived from a single source. Well, imagine that!
In 2015, researchers at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Northern Engineering, funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, began a four-year study of details of the WTC7 collapse. The Final Report, released on March 25, concluded that WTC7 was destroyed not by office fires but “by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.” Four years and a third of a million dollars, and that’s IT? What is so maddeningly frustrating – now after nearly two decades – is that all these engineers and architects refuse to take the next appropriate step and openly state, as a “working hypothesis”, that the building was prepared for demolition. All were trained in the physics of Isaac Newton’s universe, and all of their data point to that and nowhere else.
In the name of science and good sense, all of these engineering physicists have an obligation to speak much more clearly. I am a zoologist and therefore lack the professional standing to frame a hypothesis for an engineering issue, but there is a crying need for an openly-stated hypothesis from the professional community. What other than professional demolition could cause dozens of massive steel columns to “fail” simultaneously to such an extreme degree as to allow for free fall of a skyscraper, even for a moment? I’m serious. If there is another possible explanation that makes physical sense, all of these architects should just state it. Instead, what they suggest people do is send the Final Report to their members of Congress. Really! Such a level of naïveté is unacceptable and is merely a recipe for more years of failure to win a “new” investigation — as if the 9/11 Commission whitewash could qualify as a legitimate investigation.
One might argue that US journalism had some excuse to be blind to the demolition of WTC7 as long as the NIST report could be cited, but as of now, the reputation of NIST is a smoking ruin, and rightly so. Leaders of the NIST report lied before the eyes of the world, and if they have a shred of decency remaining they would be publicly begging for forgiveness. And the same would apply to the members of the 9/11 Commission who certified the deception, Max Cleland the sole exception, his having resigned in disgust early on. In particular, consider the 9/11 Commission’s Executive Director, Phillip Zelikow. Look over the array of governmental positions the man has enjoyed, and then reflect on what it must say about inner workings of the U.S. Government that he remains honored and in key positions rather than behind bars. Further, what does it say about political involvements of the University of Virginia that he heads its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences?
Becoming aware of the depth of rot and corruption throughout upper levels of government, media and academia is absolutely heartbreaking. Elements within and without the U.S. Government, in concert with a mercenary journalism, have executed a monstrous and convoluted deception on the American people and the world, and as Ben Bagdikian wrote in The New Media Monopoly, “Once a basic untruth is rooted, it blurs a society’s perception of reality and, consequently, the intelligence with which society reacts to events.” As psychologist Robert Griffin has put it: “9/11, and facing the truth about it, is important to the soul of America. Values that have come from the official story have corrupted us emotionally, mentally and spiritually.” Accordingly, the engineering community, rather than just dumping years of accumulated data onto a lay society, has a moral obligation to state, in clearest terms, a hypothesis as to what caused the steel of WTC7 to fail.
Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press.
President Donald Trump saw the same day that bombs must have been used on the WTC towers on 9/11/2001. He quickly knew that the official Bush Story of 9/11 (BS911) was a lie. From his experience building steel sky scrapers, he knew they were built to be strong, even against a jet. He stated to the reporter that bombs must also have been involved. Donald showed what a nice guy he is, as he called his competitor Larry Silverstein to see if he was ok. He did not suspect Larry let 3000 of his tenants die for over $4 billion from insurance. Never investigated by George Bush’s 9/11 Commission:
* Controlled Demolition: Thermitic explosive residue has been found in the WTC dust by scientists.
* WTC Building 7: Collapsed at near free fall speed at 5:20 pm and not hit by a plane
* Ace Elevator Company in the shafts 1994 – 2001 the perfect place to plant explosives next to columns http://www.aneta.org/Ace
* LVI Services removing illegal asbestos above the ceiling panels, another perfect place to plant explosives
* SecuraCom: the security guard company with his brother Marvin Bush on the Board of Directors
* Larry Silverstein purchased landlord rights a few months before 9/11 doubled the insurance was not in his usual office and received over $4 billion
Note: This was an audio-only interview by reporters at Channel 9. Rolland Smith, Alan Marcus The photo in the thumb nail is actually from another interview by a German reporter on 9/11/2001, who looks similar to Alan.
On March 25, 2020, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks issued the final report of a four-year computer modeling study on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.
The 47-story WTC 7 was the third skyscraper to be completely destroyed on September 11, 2001, collapsing rapidly and symmetrically into its footprint at 5:20 PM. Seven years later, investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) concluded that WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of normal office fires.
Contrary to the conclusions of NIST, the UAF research team finds that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was not caused by fires but instead was caused by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.
The ongoing and unfolding reactions to the Corona Virus look set to have wide-ranging and long-lasting effect on politics, society and economics. The drive to close down all activities is extraordinary as are the measures being promoted to isolate people from each other.
The deep-rooted fear of contagious disease, hardwired into the collective consciousness by historical events such as the ‘Black/Bubonic Plague’ and maintained through popular culture (e.g. the Hollywood movies Outbreak and Contagion), means that people are without question highly susceptible to accepting extreme emergency measures whether or not such measures are rational or justified. The New York Times called for America to be put on a war footing in order to deal with Corona whilst former Army General Stanley McChrystal has been invoking his 9/11 experience in order to prescribe lessons for today’s leaders.
At the same time, political actors are fully aware that these conditions of fear and panic provide a critical opportunity that can be exploited in order to pursue political, economic and societal objectives. It is very likely, however, that the dangers posed by the potential exploitation of Corona for broader political, economic and societal objectives far outweigh the immediate threat to life and health from the virus. A lesson from recent history is instructive here.
9/11 AND THE GLOBAL ‘WAR ON TERROR’
The events of September 11 2001 represent a key moment in contemporary history. The destruction of three skyscrapers in New York after the impact of two airliners and an attack on the Pentagon, killing around 3000 civilians, shocked both American and global publics. The horror of seeing aircraft being flown into buildings, followed by the total destruction of three high rise buildings within a matter of seconds, and the spectre of a shadowy band of Islamic fundamentalists (Al Qaeda) having pulled off such devastating attacks, gripped the imagination of many in the Western world.
It was in this climate of paranoia and fear that extraordinary policies were implemented. The USA Patriot Act led to significant civil liberty restrictions whilst the mass surveillance of the digital environment became normalized.
In the United States torture was authorized in the name of preventing terrorism whilst the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba became a site in which accused individuals have been held without any adequate legal protection or due process.
Remarkably, the individual accused of leading the alleged 9/11 plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who ‘confessed’ to CIA interrogators after being ‘waterboarded’ 183 times, has recently received his trial date, set for January 11 2021 and 20 years after 9/11. Civil liberty restrictions, mass surveillance and torture were only a sub-strand of the major war-fighting-policy that was enabled by 9/11.
Presented at the time as America’s ‘New Pearl Harbour’, 9/11 provided the conditions for a series of major regime-change wars which persist until today.
Critically, these wars have not been primarily about combatting ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’/Al Qaeda, but rather attacking ‘enemy’ [of Israel] states. Indeed, the evidence that the 9/11 event and the alleged threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ was then exploited in order to pursue a geo-politically [Zionist] motivated set of regime-change wars which had little connection to the purported Al Qaeda threat is well established.
Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, famously went public in 2006/7 stating that immediately after 9/11 he had been informed that the US was intending to attack seven countries within five years including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Clark stated:
He [the Joint Staff officer] picked up a piece of paper, he said I just got this down from upstairs, from the Secretary of Defence’s office today, and he said this is a memo that describes how we are gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
Clark’s claims have recently been corroborated by retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (chief of staff to Colin Powell and Iraq War planner) who stated that he had actually seen the same plans Clark was referring to many months prior to 9/11:
My first briefing in the Pentagon from an Air Force three-star general in February of 2001 I almost fell of my chair because their briefing included on the one hand the Air Force’s ability to take out 80 to 90% of the targets in North Korea in the first few hours of an aerial strike on that country to hey when we do Iraq we’re gonna do Syria and Lebanon and we’re going to do Iran and maybe Egypt … but this was more than that [just contingency planning] Wes Clark is right they had these plans they were going to go right through all these countries that they felt threatened Israel all through those countries that they felt threatened 25-30% of the world’s oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Documentary evidence for these claims has come by way of the UK Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 Iraq War. For example, a report quoted a British embassy cable, dated 15 September 2001, explained that ‘[t]he “regime-change hawks” in Washington are arguing that a coalition put together for one purpose [against international terrorism] could be used to clear up other problems in the region.’ Another document released by Chilcot shows British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush discussing phases one and two of the ‘war on terror’ and when to hit particular countries. Blair writes:
If toppling Saddam is a prime objective, it is far easier to do it with Syria and Iran in favour or acquiescing rather than hitting all three at once.
The regime-change wars that have flowed directly and indirectly from 9/11 continue to this day. War and conflict continues in Afghanistan and Iraq whilst the nine-year-long war in Syria has borne witness to extensive and illegal policies pursued by Western governments including the funding and arming of extremist groups coupled with support for groups actually aligned with Al Qaeda. Iran continues to be subjected to US hybrid warfare tactics including sanctions and covert operations whilst the threat of military action is very clear and present.
The human cost of these wars, built upon the ruthless exploitation of public fear of terrorism in order to pursue multiple ‘regime-change’ wars, has been huge. According to the Brown University ‘Costs of War Project’, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have killed a combined 480,000 to 507,000 civilians, coalition military members, and foreign fighters, with an untold number having been maimed and disfigured. IPPNW estimated that the first ten years of the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan killed 1.3 million people.
Since 2011, in Syria alone, over 400,000 people have died as a result of war. The numbers of people displaced as a result of these conflicts are also extremely high; wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria have wrought a combined 9.39 million refugees, 10.78 million internally displaced peoples, and 830,000 asylum seekers. In addition, there are persisting and very serious concerns with respect to the possible involvement of state actors with the event of 9/11.
Overall, the 9/11 global ‘war on terror’ is increasingly coming to be understood particularly across the world as, first and foremost, a remarkable propaganda campaign designed to enable violent conflict in the international system and with its effects and objectives being far wider and deeper than had been suggested by official narratives regarding the need to combat Al Qaeda.
CORONA VIRUS: A NEW 9/11?
The lesson of 9/11 is that major events can become what scholar Peter Dale Scott describes as deep events which are exploited by political actors in order to precipitate and manage major political, economic and social shifts. 9/11 became, in effect, the deep event that enabled 20 years of unfettered Western warfare abroad and severe civil liberty restrictions and extensive surveillance at home.
At the time of 9/11 many people in the West were terrified of terrorism. Public opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan (the first regime war to flow within months of 9/11) was almost impossible without being accused of being reckless in the ‘fight against terrorism’ or of being an ‘Al Qaeda’ sympathizer. Muslims throughout the West were widely despised. US President George Bush declared that ‘you are either with us or against us’. The parallels with what is happening today are obvious.
Is the Corona Virus a new 9/11, a new deep event? We cannot yet be sure, as of this writing. Perhaps the current strategy of suspending basic liberties will work to effectively eliminate all threats posed by the virus. Governments will then restore the civil liberties currently being suspended and all will fairly quickly return to the way things were before. Perhaps the economy will confidently weather the fallout from the ‘lockdowns’ and everything will return to business as usual.
And perhaps a sober ‘lessons learned’ review will lead to public health officials developing reasonable and balanced plans, such as developing sufficient capacity for rapid testing and tracing, which can be deployed the next time a sufficiently dangerous virus starts to spread thus avoiding terrifying publics and implementing draconian measures that inflict significant damage to the social and economic fabric of society.
Or perhaps not. It may be that, as British journalist Peter Hitchens has been warning, the loss of liberty and basic rights will continue indefinitely as governments greedily hold on to their increased powers of control over their citizenry.
Similarly, Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi has warned about the risks in Italy of state authorities, hostile to open societies and the political left, exploiting Corona in order to increase their control.
An obvious concern here is whether there will be a permanent impact on mass gatherings and protests. James Corbett warns of a permanent state of ‘medical martial law’ and there is certainly the very real possibility of the normalization of government-imposed quarantine and other freedom of movement restrictions.
Margaret Kimberley of the US-based Black Agenda Report warns that Corona may be used as a way of covering up both economic crisis and collapse. She notes that the Federal Reserve ‘recently threw Wall Street a $1.5 trillion lifeline which only kicked the can down the road. The can has been kicked ever since the Great Recession of 2008’. The likely destruction of small businesses might allow for ever greater corporate choke-hold on the economy with more people forced into the corporate workforce.
There is certainly the danger that Corona will be exploited in order to distract from severe economic problems whilst also enabling the pursuit of new economic strategies which worsen rather than mitigate the social inequalities that already tarnish Western countries.
And, of course those actors behind the regime-change wars that flowed from 9/11 may use the Corona Virus to increase pressure on the countries they have been targeting for the last 20 years and those they wish to target in the future.
ABC news report that, despite the Corona Virus, US and UAE troops have held a major military exercise ‘that saw forces seize a sprawling model Mideast city’. It is also worth nothing here the recent US assassination of Iranian General Solemeni and the on-going proxy battles between US forces and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq. The possibility of Corona being exploited in order to further the regime change wars we have seen over the last 20 years is extremely likely and it would be naïve in the extreme to think otherwise.
Whatever the Corona event may or may not be, the fundamental lesson of the last 20 years is that governments can and do exploit, even manipulate, events in order to pursue political, social, military and economic objectives. Fearful populations are frequently irrational ones, vulnerable and malleable. Now is not the time for deference to authority and reluctance to speak out.
It is time for publics to get informed, think calmly and rationally, and to robustly scrutinize and challenge what their governments are doing. The dangers of failing to do this likely far surpass the immediate threat posed by the Corona Virus.
Trump claims Iran’s military is routed just as IRGC launched missiles strike American bases
RT | June 10, 2026
The Iranian military has been “completely defeated,” US President Donald Trump has claimed, warning Tehran it will “pay the price” for delaying a deal with Washington.
The warnings came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced missile and drone strikes on American military facilities in several Arab countries in retaliation for recent US attacks. US Central Command said the operations inside Iran were carried out after an AH-64 Apache helicopter was lost near the Strait of Hormuz, an incident it blamed on Tehran.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday that Iran “is all talk and no action,” adding that “The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” … Full article
HEAT exposure could drive a dramatic rise in cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden across the USA over the next 25 years, with researchers warning that climate change and population ageing may combine to reverse decades of progress in heart health.
Heat Exposure Threatens Future Heart Health A new modelling study estimated that heat-attributable CVD burden could more than triple by 2050 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, disproportionately affecting older adults and economically disadvantaged communities. … Full article
… Climate change and land use conversion have the potential to increase the frequency of encounters between snakes and humans. This situation arises due to changes in temperature and rainfall, the loss of natural habitats, and shifts in food sources, which drive snakes to move into areas closer to human activity.
Prof Mirza Dikari Kusrini, a lecturer in the Department of Forest Resource Conservation and Ecotourism, Faculty of Forestry and Environment (Fahutan) at IPB University, explained that climate change affects snakes’ behavior, distribution, and movement patterns. … Full article
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