The Humans Are Waking Up

Posted on by
1

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

You run into a lot of despair in this line of work. The more you learn about the mechanisms of power, the more hopeless things seem at first glance.

The political system is totally locked down, with anyone who tries to upend the status quo being aggressively sabotaged by the mass media and their own political party.

Technology, which futurists have long heralded as the deus ex machina which will liberate humanity from its self-destructive ways, is owned by plutocrats with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and is pervasively infiltrated by murderous intelligence agencies from top to bottom.

Even attempts to circulate information about the dangers of war, ecocide and oligarchy are consistently sabotaged by internet censorship, blanket de-platforming and mass media propaganda, and even imprisonment if one’s truth-telling becomes too successful.

Still, I remain unwaveringly hopeful. Not because I foresee any of those massive obstacles vanishing at any time in the near future, but because I see an escape route that none of them are blocking.

I have had a great many bizarre and utterly unanticipated experiences, some of them ongoing, which assure me beyond a shadow of a doubt that humanity is capable of far, far more than our consensus worldview about ourselves accounts for. Most of those experiences I will probably never share publicly, because, while I often venture well off the beaten path in my commentary, if I discussed those experiences people will think I’m way more insane than they already believe me to be. But I don’t mind sharing here that I know from my own experience that humans are capable of radically and permanently shifting into a much healthier and efficacious relationship with mental narrative, which happens to be the mechanism by which existing power structures keep us locked down.

But so what, right? Just because an individual is capable of exiting the fearful egoic state of consciousness which propagandists and social engineers exploit to manipulate us into consenting to the status quo doesn’t mean that everybody is. People have been writing about spiritual enlightenment for millennia, and still we remain collectively asleep. Believing that such a shift is possible on a mass scale is childish and absurd. Right?

Well, maybe. That objection certainly makes sense from the perspective of our consensus worldview about what humans are capable of. Except people who’ve been coaching others into this shift for a long time say in no uncertain terms that it’s becoming more and more common.

“For the first time there is a large scale awakening on our planet,” spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said in an interview last year. “Why now? Because if there is no change in human consciousness now, we will destroy ourselves and perhaps the planet. The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now. Without considering the Eastern world, my estimate is that at this time about ten percent of people in North America are already awakening. That makes thirty million Americans alone, and in addition to those people in other North American countries, about ten percent of the population of Western European countries are also awakening. This is probably enough of a critical mass to bring about a new earth. So the transformation of consciousness is truly happening even though they won’t be reporting it on tonight’s news. Is it happening fast enough? I am hopeful about humanity’s future, much more so now than when I wrote The Power of Now. In fact that is why I wrote that book. I really wasn’t sure that humanity was going to survive. Now I feel differently. I see many reasons to be hopeful.”

Tolle is easily the best-known teacher on the subject of enlightenment in the western world, and he’s been doing it for decades. There’s not much research available on this topic, but if anyone in the west has interacted with enough people and gathered enough experience to make such a declaration, it would be him.

But what if he’s wrong? Well again, maybe. But he’s not alone in this perspective.

“There’s a phenomenon happening in the world today. More and more people are waking up—having real, authentic glimpses of reality,” writes Adyashanti, another longtime popular awakening coach. “In the beginning of my teaching work, most of the people who came to me were seeking these deeper realizations of spirituality. They were seeking to wake up from the limiting and isolated senses of self they had imagined themselves to be. It’s this yearning that underpins all spiritual seeking: to discover for ourselves what we already intuit to be true— that there is more to life than we are currently perceiving. But as time has passed, more and more people are coming to me who have already had glimpses of this greater reality.”

Adyashanti gets a bit more specific than Tolle, saying that it’s non-abiding “glimpse”-type awakenings in particular that are growing more common, which often happen spontaneously without having been sought out.

“This glimpse of awakening, which I call non-abiding awakening, is becoming more and more common,” he writes. “It happens for a moment, an afternoon, a day, a week—maybe as long as a month or two. Awareness opens up, the sense of the separate self falls away—and then, like the aperture on a camera lens, awareness closes back down.”

Jac O’Keeffe, another awakening coach who’s been teaching for some time, has more to add on the subject. She said in a 2015 interview that the awakening process, which used to be a difficult and much more physiologically gruelling ordeal for humans, is coming to us more easily not just as a process, but in terms of how physically taxing it is as well.

“We live in an interesting time, and whether it’s a leap in the evolution of consciousness, or whether it’s because of the industrial age and the quickening that has come about in how we function as human beings; whether it’s unusual, or whether it’s a part of the pattern, I’m not sure,” O’Keeffe said. “However, what’s happening right now is that there’s a mutation happening because we’re not changing fast enough for the changing mechanisms that we have created in the world. And so the shift in consciousness that’s happening now, it’s phenomenally more rapid than how it used to be. Things are not as concrete and as solid, not as difficult to shift in folk’s perception as it used to be. That’s for sure, for sure.”

“The mechanism of which through this is seen also, there seems to be less of a trauma or a dramatic shift,” O’Keeffe added. “Spiritual shifts used to be really difficult on the body, really difficult on every level — they’re not now. And what is that? How come? It’s like our whole cellular structures are more susceptible to transformation, to the embodiment of a higher frequency, a higher vibration. And you know, while we have more toxicity, we also have more availability of hearing what’s beyond all of it, of information, of new influences, of education, you know? We’re learning how to use the mind at last. And so this is bringing about a quickening in the evolution of consciousness.”

Dr Jeffery A Martin, who has been gathering data on awakened individuals for the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness, told me via email that “We see an uptick in our data that starts about 1996. By this I mean the number of people saying they transitioned after that time versus before.”

“However it is important to note that we have a snowball sample, not a full population sample, so that could be a bias in our data,” Martin added. “If it is not, the only correlate we’ve been able to think of is that the Internet was reaching a level of connectivity and information sharing maturity starting about this time. So practices that were formerly secret or soloed were starting to become more available, and one of our key findings is that the best way to make progress is to find your fit from a practice standpoint.”

“I’m reasonably confident that significantly more people are coming to see True Nature than any other time in human history,” said awakening coach Fred Davis when I asked him for comment on the subject via email, adding, “I do think there are more clear beings on the planet than there were even ten years ago.”

Now obviously awakenings becoming more common than they used to be wouldn’t by itself mean much; humanity overall remains deeply unconscious and we appear to be bound for either extinction or Orwellian dystopia if we continue on our current trajectory at its current rate. But the fact that this phenomenon seems to be getting more common and more easy in various ways indicates that something is up. Something entirely unanticipated, from way out of left field which neither the revolutionaries nor the propagandists have foreseen.

But why would we be experiencing a sudden shift in consciousness? Darwinian evolution doesn’t explain it, since if this phenomenon is real it’s moving far too quickly and without natural selection eliminating the unenlightened from the gene pool at any noticeable rate.

Well, maybe as O’Keeffe suggested it’s got something to do with the industrial age and how it’s changed the way we function as a species, or as Martin theorized is due to the increased availability of spiritual teachings online. We now after all have over 4.5 billion human brains connected to each other by the internet with well over half our world’s population now online, which by itself is per definition a shift in human consciousness without adding any fancy stuff about spiritual enlightenment. It’s hard to imagine such a drastic change not having a significant impact on the way our minds operate collectively. So that could be part of it.

It could also have something to do with the fact that, as Adyashanti once suggested in an interview, we’re all aware on some level that we’re at a point of crisis where we’ll either change or go extinct.

“Crises are often the catalyst for change,” he said. “And I think as humanity is in general we can all start to agree, I hope we’re starting to agree, that we’re coming to a place of crisis. That… we’re coming into contact, not just with our own personal mortality, but our mortality as a species. That we as a species may not survive. And that can provide, just like individual mortality, [that] can lead to a change of consciousness because we realize time’s run out. There is no more time. So in that ‘no more time’ sometimes consciousness can shift. And as humanity I think we’re rapidly approaching that same kind of imperative. Time is running out and so quite naturally there is tremendous pressure on humanity and on humanity’s consciousness right now. We all feel it, right? This tremendous pressure to evolve, to awaken, because somehow intuitively everyone knows that if there’s not some rather dramatic shift in consciousness then this opportunity will be missed.”

Another potential explanation for our apparent “quickening” is the possibility that we’re all a lot more interconnected than we assume we are. Some strange and unexpected anomalies in scientific studies have poked a few uncomfortable holes in the consensus worldview about organisms existing as wholly independent individuals on this earth, which opens up the possibility that one person’s awakening could in some ways inform the level of consciousness of the whole of humanity.

Scientist Rupert Sheldrake has been documenting the curious way animals sometimes appear capable of picking up new skills in ways that learning and genetics don’t seem to account for, like the strange case of laboratory rats around the world suddenly getting better at navigating water mazes from generation to generation following a water maze study in the 1920s by psychologist William McDougall. Sheldrake’s theories are often rejected by mainstream scientists with an extreme emotionality which reveals an egoic fixation on dogma rather than scientific objectivity, but if you’re curious about his ideas he had an interesting appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience a few years ago which outlines his thinking more clearly than any other video I’ve found.

If this is true, if humans are interconnected in such a way that one person’s awakening could be informing the rest of the species, then this could indicate that we are on track for a exponential awakening event of the kind that could transform us as a species overnight.

When futurist Roy Amara said “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” he wasn’t really making a statement about technology, he was making a statement about human cognition. We’re pattern-seeking creatures whose minds tend to think in linear terms within the near future, a tendency which served us well in our evolutionary history when trying to predict when it’s safe to reproduce and where the mammoths will be, but which is absolutely useless in predicting large-scale movements which may be nonlinear. It’s possible that the only reason the predictions the hippies were making about the “great awakening” that started in the sixties was solely because of this cognitive bias Amara spoke of. Perhaps we overestimated the short-term effects of that shift and underestimated its ongoing effects in the long term.

I personally don’t know quite what to make of any of this, which could end up being a good thing. If our future depends on us finding a way out of this ecocidal, omnicidal status quo that the propagandists and manipulators can’t anticipate and slam the door on, it’s going to have to come from an unexpected and mysterious direction. Something does appear to be stirring deep within our species, and for me that’s enough reason to hold out hope and keep pushing for real change. Maybe this shift isn’t what it appears to be from my point of view, and even if it is that doesn’t mean it will necessarily start happening quickly enough, but it’s enough to take a stand on. I believe we’ll either transcend our old self-destructive patterns or perish, so we might as well say “Damn the torpedoes” and sprint toward that transcendence at full speed.

Saturday Matinee: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

Posted on by
Reply

Review by Chuck Foster

Source: Film Threat

On March 31st, 1971, an independent film made by a black man for the black community opened at the Grand Circus Theatre in Detroit and broke the house record. Two days later, it broke another record in Atlanta and became the top-grossing independent film of the year (according to some sources). It sparked a wave of underground filmmaking that lasted at least a decade and became an incredibly polarizing statement of experience. That film was Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

To be fair, this was not the first all-black production to hit the silver screen. So-called “race” films existed through the first half of the 1900s. Comprised of black crews and casts, they delivered entertainment to a specific audience who would relate to the stories. Many of these films are tragically lost to time or have yet to be properly reissued, but one is widely available on any number of fifty or one-hundred public domain movie collections. Clocking in at just under an hour, Oscar Micheaux’s Ten Minutes to Live (1932) presents a near-anthology of two stories centered around a Harlem nightclub. Sporting several musical numbers and a strange sense of framing the image, it and its contemporaries paved the way for a young filmmaker named Melvin Van Peebles.

Sweetback wasn’t Van Peebles’ first film, either. As he tells it, he’d made a series of shorts and brought them to Los Angeles, where the studios offered him a job as a janitor. Instead, he moved to France, where he wrote several books and made 1968’s The Story of a Three-Day Pass, a beautiful film about a black American GI who has a love affair with a white woman while on weekend but finds himself demoted and shamed when he returns to base. The film garnered enough attention to get him a studio deal. Columbia picked him to make The Watermelon Man (1970), the story of a typical suburban bigot who wakes up one day to discover that he’s turned black overnight. Starring Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine and Mantan Moreland, it established Van Peebles as a serious, if unorthodox, director.

When it came time to make Sweetback, however, he decided to make it on his own with no studios or financiers telling him what to do. It was a story he wanted to tell and it resonated. Essentially, it centers on Sweetback (Van Peebles), a male prostitute and performer in homemade underground sex shows, whose boss lends him to the police so their boss knows they’re working. Along the way, they arrest Mu-Mu (Hubert Scales), a young, charismatic Black Panther, and take him to a side road for “a little walk.” Sweetback grows angry watching the abuse and attacks the cops, beating them into a coma and setting Mu-Mu free. He then goes on the run, encountering people from his past, the mob, Hell’s Angels and bounty hunters along the way. It sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s not.

Most noticeably, Van Peebles’ visual style blends the uncanny staging of home movies with a French New Wave perspective on iconography and metaphors. The result resembles Easy Rider, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Jean-Luc Godard with George Romero’s “cover-your-ass” style quick editing, but completely unique in delivery. Psychedelic visuals propel the story from parts of Los Angeles we don’t usually see on film to the desert. A bombastic soundtrack, performed by Van Peebles with a very early Earth, Wind & Fire, adds to the tension with gospel, funk, and atonality.

A word should be said about the opening sequence in which Sweetback discovers his calling in life. The young boy, played by Melvin’s son Mario Van Peebles, is rather graphically seduced by a much older woman. Many people have derided the scene as child pornography and irresponsible parenting. No genitals are seen and Mario was under the strict supervision of his father the entire time. Yes, it is disturbing, but it’s also something that happens every day whether we like to admit it or not. Children are abused and coerced into sex on a regular basis. Van Peebles throws that in our face with a stark sense of reality. Pornography is meant to excite; this is just nauseating.

Read anybody’s take on the film today and half love it while the other half loathes it. That contrast typically indicates you’ve done something right. Regardless, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song brazenly kicked the door open for everything from direct imitators like Shaft, Superfly, and Dolemite to modern filmmakers like Tyler Perry and Ice Cube. Whether you love it or hate it, we owe this film a debt because it literally changed the world.

 

Watch the full film on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/sweet-sweetback-s-baadasssss-song

Suddenly West is Failing to Overthrow “Regimes”

Posted on by
Reply

By Andre Vltchek

Source: New Eastern Outlook

It used to be done regularly and it worked: The West identified a country as its enemy, unleashed its professional propaganda against it, then administered a series of sanctions, starving and murdering children, the elderly and other vulnerable groups. If the country did not collapse within months or just couple of years, the bombing would begin. And the nation, totally shaken, in pain, and in disarray, would collapse like a house of cards, once the first NATO boots hit its ground.

Such scenarios were re-enacted, again and again, from Yugoslavia to Iraq.

But suddenly, something significant has happened. This horrific lawlessness, this chaos stopped; was deterred.

The West keeps using the same tactics, it tries to terrorize independent-minded countries, to frighten people into submission, to overthrow what it defines as ‘regimes’, but its power, its monstrously destructive power, has all of a sudden become ineffective.

It hits, and the attacked nation shakes, screams, sheds blood, but keeps standing, keeps proudly erect.

What we are experiencing is a great moment in human history. Imperialism has not yet been defeated, but it is losing its global grip on power.

Now we have to clearly understand ‘Why?’, so we can continue our struggle, with even greater determination, with even greater effectiveness.

First of all, by now we know that the West cannot fight. It can spend trillions on ‘defense’, it can build nuclear bombs, ‘smart missiles’ and strategic warplanes. But it is too cowardly, too spoiled to risk the lives of its soldiers. It either kills remotely, or by using regional mercenaries. Whenever it becomes clear that the presence of its troops would be required, it backs up.

Secondly, it, the West, is totally horrified of the fact that there are now two super-powerful countries – China and Russia – which are unwilling to abandon their allies. Washington and London do all they can to smear Russia and to intimidate China. Russia is being provoked continuously: by propaganda, by military bases, sanctions and by new and newer bizarre mass media inventions that depict it as the villain in all imaginable circumstances. China has been provoked practically and insanely, ‘on all fronts’ – from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and the so-called ‘Uyghur Issue’, to trade.

Any strategy that could weaken these two countries, is applied. Yet, Russia and China do not crumble. They do not surrender. And they do not abandon their friends. Instead, they are building great railroads in Africa and Asia, they educate people from almost all poor and desperate countries, and stand by those who are being terrorized by both North America and Europe.

Thirdly, all the countries in the world are now clearly aware of what would happen to them, if they give up and get ‘liberated’ by the Western empire. Iraq, Honduras, Indonesia, Libya and Afghanistan, are the ‘best’ examples. Submitting themselves to the West, countries can only expect misery, absolute collapse and the ruthless extraction of their resources. The poorest country in Asia – Afghanistan – has totally collapsed under NATO occupation.

The suffering and pain of the Afghan and Iraqi people is very well known to the citizens of Iran and Venezuela. They are not giving up, because no matter how tough their life is under sanctions and the West-administered terror, they are well-aware of the fact that things could get worse, much worse, if their countries were to be occupied and governed by the Washington and London-injected maniacs.

And everyone knows the fate of the people living in Palestine or Golan Heights, places which have been overrun by the closest ally of the West in the Middle East, Israel.

Of course, there are other reasons why the West cannot get any of its adversaries to kneel.

One is – that the toughest ones are left. Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea (DPRK), Iran, Syria and Venezuela are not going to run away from the battlefield. These are the most determined nations on earth. These are the countries that have already lost thousands, millions, even tens of millions of their people, in the fight against Western imperialism and colonialism.

If one is following the latest attacks of the West carefully, the scenario is pathetic, almost grotesque: Washington and often the EU, too, are trying hard; they are hitting, they are spending billions of dollars, using the local mercenaries (or call it ‘local opposition’), and then they quickly withdraw after wretched but anticipated defeat. So far, Venezuela has survived. Syria survived. Iran survived. China is fighting horrible Western-backed subversions, but it is proudly surviving. Russia is standing tall.

This is a tremendous moment in human history. For the first time, Western imperialism is being not only defeated, but fully unveiled and humiliated. Many are now laughing at it, openly.

But we should not celebrate, yet. We should understand what and why this is happening, and then continue fighting. There are many, many battles ahead of us. But we are on the right track.

Let them try. We know how to fight. We know how to prevail. We have already fought fascism in many of its forms. We know what freedom is. Their ‘freedom’ is not our freedom. Their ‘liberty’ is not our liberty. What they call ‘democracy’ is not how we want our people to rule and to be ruled. Let them go away; we, our people, do not want them!

Freedom Rider: Protest and the Corporate Media

Posted on by
1

By Margaret Kimberly

Source: Black Agenda Report

The corporate media are steadfast partners with the United States government and faithfully follow the party line on foreign policy issues.

“The networks and the newspapers can seldom be believed.”

Corporate media always let us know who is in with the in-crowd and who is on the outs with the United States government. They don’t do so with any transparency, but by promoting some stories and disappearing others. They give great attention to events that they believe are advancing U.S. interests. The invisibility treatment goes to those who tell inconvenient truths and defy American dictates.

Protests in Hong Kong against the Chinese government and in Moscow against the Russian government are covered extensively. But only those who know where to look are aware that the #NoMoreTrump campaign in Venezuela drew thousands of people into the streets of Caracas. Likewise only the most discerning are aware that Haitians are part of the Venezuela story. Their corrupt leadership stole millions of dollars that the pre-sanctions Venezuela government set aside for the benefit of the Haitian people. Thousands of Haitians expressed their anger in the only way they can, with sustained mass demonstrations.

“Only those who know where to look are aware that the #NoMoreTrump campaign in Venezuela drew thousands of people into the streets of Caracas.”

The bias isn’t confined to the global south. The yellow vest protests continue throughout France after nearly one year with no sign of letting up, but media coverage has diminished. Of course, even in this instance there is a pecking order. The yellow vests get some attention but African immigrants protesting their plight in France receive hardly any.

The corporate media are steadfast partners with the United States government and faithfully follow the party line on foreign policy issues. They may provide hours of coverage to protests in Hong Kong but won’t mention that the organizers meet with State Department officials. They don’t bother to tell the history of Hong Kong and how it was stolen by the British during the Opium Wars. Hong Kong is part of China and it is up to that government to make decisions about its future. It is indeed suspicious when “pro democracy” demonstrators wave the American flag and the Union Jack.

“The yellow vest protests continue throughout France after nearly one year with no sign of letting up.”

The story of the Moscow protests is similar. Alexei Navalny is once again the leader. He is supported by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch now living in exile after Vladimir Putin imprisoned him for 10 years. Khodorkovsky uses his remaining wealth to further many anti-government actions. This easily verified fact is seldom mentioned when American media tell the story.

The reporting about these manipulated protests is blatant in its disregard for the truth. Yellow vest protesters have been shot in the eyes by police bullets and hundreds have been injured. The Moscow police release most arrested protesters within a day, and unlike in France no one has lost an eye.

The yellow vests put Emanuel Macron on the ropes and he is unlikely to be re-elected. The depth of anger directed at the neo-liberal schemes which tear at the French safety net is clear and his political viability is in doubt. But the Moscow protests orchestrated by a media savvy movement are of far less significance. There is no indication that they have moved beyond a core group of Vladimir Putin opponents or that they reflect the ideology of the nation at large.

“It is indeed suspicious when “pro democracy” demonstrators wave the American flag and the Union Jack.”

Russians were very angry when Putin proposed raising the retirement age, a quite logical response to neo-liberal mischief. But there is no indication that the inability of his opponents to get on the ballot for Moscow municipal elections is a cause for concern among the masses of people.

In Hong Kong the hand of the United States government and its NGOs is obvious. Following the money shows who is leading the less than spontaneous demonstrations. In Moscow the new neo-liberals want to replace the old ones and do so at the urging of people who would attack Russian sovereignty vis a vis the United States.

China and Russia are full of contradictions that cause confusion among the uninformed. Neither country is democratic in the way that Americans understand but, then again, their country isn’t either. The important point is that they are viewed as enemies by a nation which isn’t satisfied unless all others are allies, lap dogs or utterly destroyed.

Every act condoned by the U.S. is a sign of desperation, including threats to physically blockade Venezuela, or goading subservient allies like the U.K. to seize Iranian oil tankers, and now to making it appear that those labeled adversaries are endangered by street protests. The tanker has now sailed on after Iran proved that it wouldn’t be intimidated and can play the same game. Nicolas Maduro is still the president of Venezuela and all the attempts of the U.S. and the cheer leading of friends in media won’t change that fact.

“The task is to oppose U.S. interventions and to defend the rights of all people to practice self-determination.”

Trump administration “maximum pressure” has led to China buying Venezuela’s oil and Iran leaving the nuclear power agreement that allies wanted to preserve. American foreign policy victories exist only as propaganda. The ship, like the seized Iranian oil tanker, has sailed and they are left with lies spread by a compliant media. As always, beware when the designation of friends and foes come from the networks and the newspapers. They can seldom be believed.

One need not like or dislike targeted foreign leaders in order to understand what is happening. The hegemon is in trouble and has picked a foolish trade fight with China which has been no more successful than any other policy decision. The task is to oppose U.S. interventions and to defend the rights of all people to practice self-determination. Supporting faux democracy movements will not lead to justice. Every effort to disrupt the world order just leads to more defeats for the U.S. and that is the best outcome of all.

 

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7 (Executive Summary)

Posted on by
Reply

Figure 1 Finite element model of WTC 7 in SAP2000.

By Lead Researcher: J. Leroy Hulsey, Project Team: Feng Xiao (Associate Professor, Nanjing University of Science and Technology), Zhili Quan (Bridge Engineer, South Carolina Department of Transportation)

Source: Institute of Norther Engineering

This report presents the findings and conclusions of a four-year study of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) — a 47-story building that suffered a total collapse at 5:20 PM on September 11, 2001, following the horrible events of that morning. This study was conducted by a three-person team of researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with funding provided by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose purpose is to conduct research and educate the public about the World Trade Center building collapses on 9/11.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce that investigated the three building failures on 9/11 — the collapse of WTC 7 was the first known instance of the total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires. However, many independent researchers have studied the collapse of WTC 7 and assembled a body of evidence that raises questions about the validity of NIST’s conclusions.

The objective of this study, therefore, was threefold: (1) Examine the structural response of WTC 7 to fire loads that may have occurred on September 11, 2001; (2) Rule out scenarios that could not have caused the observed collapse; and (3) Identify types of failures and their locations that may have caused the total collapse to occur as observed.

The UAF research team utilized three approaches for examining the structural response of WTC 7 to the conditions that may have occurred on September 11, 2001. First, we simulated the local structural response to fire loading that may have occurred below Floor 13, where most of the fires in WTC 7 are reported to have occurred. Second, we supplemented our own simulation by examining the collapse initiation hypothesis developed by NIST. We also reviewed the collapse initiation hypotheses advanced by private engineering firms whose studies were commissioned as part of litigation related to the collapse of WTC 7. Third, we simulated a number of scenarios within the overall structural system in order to determine what types of local failures and their locations may have caused the total collapse to occur as observed.

Fire Did Not Cause the Collapse of WTC 7

The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse.

This conclusion is based upon a number of findings from our different analyses. Together, they show that fires could not have caused weakening or displacement of structural members capable of initiating any of the hypothetical local failures alleged to have triggered the total collapse of the building, nor could any local failures, even if they had occurred, have triggered a sequence of failures that would have resulted in the observed total collapse.

Near-Simultaneous Failure of Every Column Explains the Collapse

The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.

This conclusion is based primarily upon the finding that the simultaneous failure of all core columns over 8 stories followed 1.3 seconds later by the simultaneous failure of all exterior columns over 8 stories produces almost exactly the behavior observed in videos of the collapse, whereas no other sequence of failures that we simulated produced the observed behavior. We cannot completely rule out the possibility that an alternative scenario may have caused the observed collapse; however, the near-simultaneous failure of every column is the only scenario we identified that was capable of producing the observed behavior.

Key Findings Upon Which the UAF Team’s Conclusions Are Based

Approach 1 Findings

•During our nonlinear connection study (Section 2.1.3.2), we discovered that NIST over-estimated the rigidity of the outside frame by not modeling its connections, essentially treating the exterior steel framing as thermally fixed, which caused all thermally-induced floor expansion to move away from the exterior. The exterior steel framing was actually flexible, while the stiffest area resistant to thermal movements, i.e., the point of zero thermal movement, was near the elevator shafts.

•Therefore, during our analysis of WTC 7’s response to fire loading (Section 2.6), we found the overall thermal movements at the A2001 base plate support near Column 79 were not sufficient to displace girder A2001 to the point that it walked off its seat (the initiating failure alleged by NIST). Whereas NIST asserted that the differential westward displacement of girder A2001 relative to Column 79 was 5.5 inches and later revised its calculation to 6.25 inches, we found that the westward displacement of girder A2001 relative to Column 79 would have been less than 1 inch under the fire conditions reported by NIST.

Approach 2 Findings

Under our second approach, we used a solid element model to evaluate the validity of NIST’s collapse initiation hypothesis, introducing a number of assumptions made by NIST that we considered to be invalid or, at best, questionable (Section 3.1). These assumptions included assuming the east exterior wall to be rigid and thermally fixed, assuming shear studs on several beams were broken due to differential thermal movement, assuming no shear studs were installed on girder A2001, and assuming that the bolts fastening girder A2001 to its seats at Columns 44 and 79 were broken (Section 3.1.1). Allowing for these overly generous assumptions, we found the following:

•When girder A2001 is heated to the temperatures assumed by NIST, it expands such that it becomes trapped behind the side plate on the western side of Column 79 as it is pushed to the west by thermally expanding floor beams. This prevents the girder’s web from traveling beyond the bearing seat, thus preventing the girder from walking off its seat (Section 3.2.1).

•NIST, by its own admission, did not include the partial height web stiffeners known to be on girder A2001. In addition to stiffening the web, these stiffeners significantly increase the bending resistance of the flange. In a subsequent analysis where we removed the side plate described in the previous analysis in order to allow for further westward travel of girder A2001, we found that the stresses in the girder flange and stiffener would not be sufficient to cause the flange to fail, thus preventing the girder from walking off its seat (Section 3.2.2).

•In a preliminary collapse initiation hypothesis, NIST posited that beam G3005 buckled because its thermal expansion was restrained by girder A2001. We found that this can happen only when the three lateral support beams S3007, G3007, and K3007 spanning from beam G3005 to the north exterior wall are not included in the model. While these short beams are observed in some of the figures in the NIST report, they are missing from the model(s) used in the thermal and structural analysis shown in the report (Section 3.2.3).

Separate from the NIST investigation, two studies of WTC 7’s collapse were commissioned by opposing sides in the lawsuit “Aegis Insurance Services, Inc. v. 7 World Trade Center Company, L.P.” Experts working in connection with engineering firms Ove Arup & Partners (Arup) and Guy Nordenson and Associates (Nordenson) were retained by the plaintiffs. The engineering firm Weidlinger Associates Inc. (Weidlinger) was retained by the defendants. After evaluating NIST’s collapse initiation hypothesis, we reviewed the Arup, Nordenson, and Weidlinger reports and found the following:

•Arup’s finite element analysis corroborates our finding that girder A2001 would become trapped behind the western side plate of Column 79. However, Arup’s analysis then goes on to contend that the five beams to the east of girder A2001 were heated enough to sag and pull the girder to the east and off of its seats. Putting aside whether this initiating mechanism is valid, we found that Nordenson incorrectly calculated the impact force of the falling girder by considering it as a point load, thus implying an infinite stiffness and no deflection. Calculating the impact force correctly, we found that it is only 34% of the 632,000 lb. force required to shear the girder bearing seat support welds at Floor 12. Therefore, the northeast corner of Floor 12 would not have collapsed if the Floor 13 girder came off its seat at Column 79, and a cascade of floor failures would not ensue.

•The Weidlinger report was prepared as a rebuttal to the Arup and Nordenson reports. Among its points of rebuttal, it corroborates our finding that the falling Floor 13 beam and girder assembly could not break through Floor 12. The Weidlinger report contends instead that Floors 9 and 10 were simultaneously heated to between 750° and 800°C in the exact same area of each floor, eventually causing those floors to fail and triggering a cascade of floor failures down to Floor 5. However, the details of the thermal analysis are not shown in the Weidlinger report, and the thermal analysis has not been made public. It is important to understand that steel structural members reaching temperatures of 750°C due to office fires can be considered extraordinary. Without any analysis provided to substantiate such temperatures, Weidlinger’s collapse initiation hypothesis must be viewed skeptically and can be assumed to have a very low probability of occurrence (Section 3.4.1).

Approach 3 Findings

Under our third approach, we simulated a number of hypothetical scenarios in order to determine what types of local failures and their locations may have caused the total collapse to occur as observed. Based upon a series of analyses, we found the following:

•Columns 79, 80, and 81 did not fail at the lower floors of the building, as asserted by NIST. In order to allow for the observed collapse of the east penthouse approximately 7 seconds prior to the collapse of the rest of the structure, these columns needed to have failed at the upper floors of the building all the way to the penthouse. Yet there were no documented fires above Floor 30. Therefore, fire did not cause the collapse of Columns 79, 80, and 81 nor the collapse of the east penthouse (Section 4.3).

•The hypothetical failure of Columns 79, 80, and 81 — the three easternmost core columns — would not trigger a horizontal progression of core column failures. Therefore, the hypotheses of NIST, Arup/Nordenson, and Weidlinger that the buckling of Column 79 could trigger a progressive collapse of the entire building are invalid, and the collapse of Columns 79, 80, and 81 high in the building was a separate and distinct event (Section 4.4). •Even if we assume the failure of Columns 79, 80, and 81 could lead to the failure of the next row of core columns, the hypothetical failure of Columns 76 to 81 would overload the exterior columns around the southeast of the building, rather than overloading the next row of core columns to the west, which would result in the building tipping to the southeast and not in a straight-down collapse (Section 4.4).

•The hypothetical simultaneous failure of all core columns (but not exterior columns) would cause the building to tip to the southwest rather than causing a straight-down collapse (Section 4.5).

•The simultaneous failure of all core columns over 8 stories followed 1.3 seconds later by the simultaneous failure of all exterior columns over 8 stories produces almost exactly the behavior observed in videos of the collapse. The collapse could have started at Floor 16 and below and produced the same behavior (Section 4.6).

It is our conclusion based upon these findings that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of all columns in the building and not a progressive collapse involving the sequential failure of columns throughout the building.

 

Read the entire document here: http://ine.uaf.edu/media/222439/uaf_wtc7_draft_report_09-03-2019.pdf

Related videos and follow-up can be found at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth: https://www.ae911truth.org/wtc7

Humans Are Creating Their Own Narratives

Posted on by
1

By Michael Krieger

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

Somewhere between the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein and his extremely suspicious death in a Department of Justice operated prison, the public learned that an FBI intelligence bulletin published by the bureau’s Phoenix field office mentioned for the first time that conspiracy theories pose a domestic terrorism threat. This was followed up last week by a Bloomberg article discussing a new project by the U.S. military (DARPA) to identify fake news and disinformation.

We learned:

Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that the Defense Department is launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” as the top Republican in Congress blocks efforts to protect the integrity of elections.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.

Recall that after the 2016 election, focus was on social media companies and we saw tremendous pressure placed on these platforms by national security state politicians and distressed Democrats to “do something” about the supposed fake news epidemic. Fast forward three years and it’s now apparently the U.S. military’s job to police human content on the internet. This is the sort of natural regression a society will witness so long as it puts up with incremental censorship and the demonization of any thought which goes against the official narrative.

Before we dissect what’s really going on, allow me to point out the glaringly obvious, which is that politicians, pundits, mass media and the U.S. military don’t actually care about the societal harm of fake news or conspiracy theories. We know this based on how the media sold government lies in order to advocate for the Iraq war, and how many of the biggest proponents of that blatant war crime have gone on to spectacularly lucrative careers in subsequent years. There were zero consequences, proving the point that this has nothing to do with the dangers of fake news or conspiracy theories, and everything to do with protecting the establishment grip on narrative creation and propagation.

The above tweet summarizes what’s really going on. It’s a provable fact that the harm caused by some crazy person reacting to viral “fake news” on social media doesn’t compare with the destruction and criminality perpetrated by oligarchs like Jeffrey Epstein, or governments which destroy entire countries and murder millions without flinching. It’s the extremely wealthy and powerful, as a consequence of their societal status and influence, who are in a position to do the most harm. This isn’t debatable, yet the U.S. military and media don’t seem particularly bothered by this sort of thing. What really keeps them up at night is a realization that the powerless masses of humanity are suddenly talking to one another across borders and coming to their own conclusions about how the world works. You’re supposed to be told what to think, not to think for yourself.

This is what the power structure’s really worried about. It’s terrified that billions of people are now in direct, instantaneous communication with one another and thinking independently about world events. The mass media’s freakout over the election of Donald Trump was never rooted in concerns about the man and his specific policies. What really bothered them was his election proved they no longer matter. Enough people simply ignored the media’s instructions to suck it up and go vote for Hillary Clinton. This repudiation and loss of control was devastating and terrifying for U.S. media personalities and their bosses.

At this point, it’s important to note that what’s happening is exactly what you’d expect after half the people on earth come online and start talking to one another in the midst of an oligarch-fueled epidemic of gangsterism masquerading as democratic government. The advent of the internet created the conditions for cross-border, near instantaneous, peer-to-peer human communication for the first time in history.

We’re still in the very early stages of discovering what it means to live in such a world, but what you’d expect to emerge is precisely what we’ve seen. We see countless streams of diverse narratives emerging to explain what’s happening around us and how power really operates. Humans are no longer accepting the narratives force-fed to them via mass media channels, and are instead talking directly to one another and creating their own narratives. This is exactly how it should be.

Meanwhile, into this increasingly disruptive environment comes the Epstein affair, which I consider another major inflection point in the public’s increased and justified cynicism about the establishment. While the mass media swallows the increasingly clownish official story hook, line and sinker, the public simply isn’t buying it according to recent polls. The most recent one from Emerson College showed that more people think he was murdered than think he committed suicide.

Alternative narratives are openly, and often successfully, competing with the spoon-fed narratives of mass media. Increased numbers are coming to understand that those who craft official narratives (government, mass media, billionaires) have their own interests, and those interests are typically not aligned with the interests of most people. There’s no reason to trust anything mass media or government says, because both groups are dominated by proven liars and war mongers. This obviously doesn’t mean you should believe everything you read online, but we must maintain perspective. Fake news from powerless citizens doesn’t compete with fake news from the government when it comes to disastrous consequences, yet the focus is always centered on the former and never the latter.

There’s a reason the U.S. military is suddenly talking about fighting fake news and disinformation, and the reason is the power structure is terrified of humans talking to each other and coming to their own conclusions. Moreover, this isn’t limited to an interpretation of world events. The emergence and success of Bitcoin represents a global movement of humans propagating an alternative narrative about money, how it could and how it should work. The longer human beings are allowed to freely talk to one another, the more likely they are to reject official narratives and shape society in a more sane manner. This represents an existential threat to the power structure. And they know it.

It’s also why CNN anchor Chris Cuomo instructed his viewers to not pay attention to those who were closest to Jeffrey Epstein.

Now the good news. I think the cat’s already out of the bag. People aren’t going back to simply swallowing official narratives regurgitated by some television mannequin with makeup and an expensive suit who’s being paid by a billionaire. This doesn’t mean there won’t be a fight; in fact, we’re already in it.

Going forward, I suspect the narrative managers will more aggressively label anyone who doesn’t toe the official line as somehow linked to or sympathetic with foreign governments. They won’t offer any proof, but they’ll claim it authoritatively. This will become an increasingly potent weapon as governments begin to more intensely scapegoat foreign nations as the root of all our problems. We’ve already seen this since the 2016 election, but I expect it to increase in frequency and force.

As such, it’s going to be increasingly important for all of us to retain control of our minds and emotions as much as possible. We must never forget the importance of critical thinking, and must adamantly defend the right of humans to talk to one another freely and come to our own conclusions. We must never forget how preposterous it is to assume media giants owned by billionaires have any interest in telling us the truth about anything.

So keep writing, keep talking, keep thinking and never lose sight of the big picture. We have the power to create our own narratives, and with it, a much better future for generations to come.

NYT Propaganda War on Syria

Posted on by
1

By Stephen Lendman

Source: StephenLendman.com

On major issues mattering most, especially geopolitical ones, the NYT is a lying machine, a propaganda machine, an anti-truth telling operation, a virtual state-sponsored ministry of deception, masquerading as real news, information and opinion.

Whenever the US wages preemptive wars of aggression on nonbelligerent states threatening no one, or in their run-up, the Times cheerleads high crimes of war and against humanity instead of denouncing them.

It consistently and repeatedly blames victims of US aggression for high crimes committed against them — Syria one of numerous examples of its abandonment of journalism the way it should be for disinformation, Big Lies and fake news.

The Times falsely accused Syrian forces of attacking hospitals numerous times, a Pentagon terror-bombing specialty it ignores.

An earlier report turned truth on its head, claiming Syrian President “Assad attacks medical facilities to break the will of the people — and to destroy evidence of his war crimes” — a bald-faced Big Lie.

The Times calls US aggression on Syria “civil war.” There’s nothing remotely “civil” about it. US-supported cutthroat killer jihadists are referred to as “rebels.”

Most of their fighters are imported from scores of foreign countries, including Western ones — armed, funded and directed by the US and its imperial partners.

In its latest edition, the Times reported on what it called “a journey through shattered Syria” — ignoring mass slaughter, vast destruction, and widespread human misery caused by US-led aggression, along with using ISIS and other terrorists as proxy foot soldiers.

What’s vital to report, the Times consistently suppresses, substituting managed new misinformation and disinformation instead.

Why Assad’s government granted permission to the Times lying machine to visit the war-torn country was unexplained.

In the Damascus countryside, “there were few young men,” it reported.

Most youths are likely involved in defending their country against US-led aggression and jihadists it supports — what the self-styled newspaper of record suppresses.

Instead it claimed they “died in the war, (were) thrown in prison or scattered far beyond Syria’s borders.”

Many indeed died at the hands of US-supported jihadists or Pentagon terror-bombing. Claiming they were thrown in prison is a bald-faced Big Lie, a Times specialty about the war and all others the US wages.

Three Times propagandists visited Syria to see the devastation firsthand. Saying “infrastructure needs rebuilding” failed to explain its destruction by Pentagon-led terror-bombing and attacks by US-supported jihadists.

The Times lied claiming Assad “presided over the destruction.” It complained about not getting permission “to roam freely,” expressed angst as well that most Syrians met and spoken to expressed support for Assad.

In June 2014, he was overwhelmingly reelected president with an 89% majority — independent international monitors calling the process open, free and fair.

The Times and other Western media falsely claimed otherwise. Syrians want no one else leading them. They’re clearly hostile to the US, other Western, and Israeli interests.

The Jewish state is responsible for terror-bombing the country hundreds of times by its own admission — on the phony pretext of combatting an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist.

Syria and its people are struggling for the country’s soul, victimized by US-led aggression.

War in its 9th year continues with no end of it in prospect because both extremist right wings of the US war party oppose restoration of peace and stability to the country.

Instead of reporting accurately on what’s gone on and continues endlessly, including illegal US occupation of northern and southern Syrian territory — the Times falsely blames Assad for US high crimes committed against the country and its people.