Tag Archives: 9/11

David Ray Griffin’s The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology

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By Edward Curtin

Source: Behind the Curtain

A Review  

There are very few writers who have done more to try to open the public’s mind to the evil nature of the American empire than David Ray Griffin.  His series of books on the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001 will endure for a long time, and they will one day, when it is safe to do so, be recognized as seminal texts exposing the traitorous conspiracy of elements within the Unites States’ government to launch the endless so-called war on terror.  That many now know, and many more will, that those so-called “terrorist” attacks were carried out by terrorists in the highest reach of the U.S. government will be due to his extraordinary work.

What many do not know is that David Ray Griffin is a Christian theologian with impeccable credentials and a scholarly oeuvre of dozens of theological books. And that long before his conscience led him to devote himself to exposing the U.S. government’s lies about the September 11 attacks, he was committed to proclaiming the radical Christian gospel of a living Christ, who was executed by the Roman state for opposing its grotesque and violent empire.

The Christian Gospel for Americans is his crowning achievement, a rare marriage of spiritual contemplation and social analysis that brings to life Jesus and the Hebrew prophets for contemporary Americans.  It is an accessible systematic theology of freedom and creativity that will inspire hope in all caring souls to resist the demonic American Empire. It is an intellectual tour de force, a kaleidoscopic “constructive postmodern” example of process theology at its finest, drawing on the work of Alfred North Whitehead, John Cobb, and Henri Bergson, among others.  Rarely does such a book come along to roil the waters of religious and social complacency.

Times change.  Once in the United States of America, theologians were fêted as important social critics and considered worth heeding.  Two of the most famous in the mid-to-late twentieth century were Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.  Both appeared on the cover of Henry Luce’s Time Magazine, and Barack Obama was later fond of referring to Niebuhr to justify his violent policies to extend the American empire.  Obama knew his audience, for Niebuhr was noted for a neo-orthodox theological perspective that encouraged “political realism,” popular among the elites who had created and extended the American empire.  He was a friend of the rich and famous ruling establishment.  His critiques of immoral government practices were always offered within the parameters of official acceptance, conservative and liberal.  He was the establishment’s theologian, lionized by the empire-touting Time magazine as the theologian who really understood politics and how God figured into the necessary realism of American foreign policy.

To his great credit, David Ray Griffin is a brave theologian who will never appear on the cover of Time magazine, for his message is more in keeping with the Biblical prophets who warned the people that their government’s behavior is an abomination in the eyes of God, and if they do not dissent and reject such policies, they will be rejecting the God they say they worship.  In true prophetic style, he connects the dots to say: look at what you are doing, slaughtering innocents everywhere as you worship your golden calf. When the Hebrew prophets “indict Israel or Judah,” he writes, “the indictments are not directed against the people in general, but against the elites who were responsible for creating and maintaining the structures of domination and exploitation.’”

The American elites surely do not wish to publicize a man who says such things; better to ignore him or have their mouthpieces call him a “conspiracy nut,” which of course they have.

Griffin’s book is rooted in the basic fact that “Christian theology is necessarily at once theological and political” since Jesus was a radical rebel leader who opposed the demonic power of the Roman Empire and was executed for that reason.  This is so fundamental, yet it has been papered over, especially since the age of Constantine in the fourth century.  Griffin says:

For one thing, the complete opposition of Jesus and his followers to the imperialism of their day has been largely hidden to readers of the gospels.  The main reason for this hiddenness is that the authors of the gospels, seeking to present the message of Jesus so as to serve the needs of the Christian movement 40 or more years after the death of Jesus, sought to make it appear that Jesus’ message was directed against, and evoked opposition from, ‘the Jews,’ rather than the Roman Empire and those who collaborated with it….This failure of later Christians to understand the beginnings of their religion has contributed to what is arguably the most fateful reversal in history: Christianity, in origin probably the most explicitly anti-imperial religious movement ever, has since the fourth century provided the religious foundation for the growth of empires even more extensive than Rome’s….He [Jesus] was crucified by the Roman Empire – not by ‘the Jews’ – because he was perceived as a threat by Roman authorities.  Given the nature of Jesus’ life and his death, American Christians today should be anti-imperialistic, rather than basking in the pleasures of Empire, as did the Roman populace two thousand years ago – ignoring the terror and poverty brought to other provinces by Roman rule.

This is the foundation upon which Griffin builds his gospel for Americans.

His theological method is liberal, while his content is conservative.  This means that to establish truth by appealing to authority is rejected as a method.  It is only evidence and reason that he relies on to establish the truth of various doctrines.  Therefore science and modern scholarship are important and must always be considered.  To claim something is true because of a deposit of divine revelation that you can read in the Bible is an old way of doing theology and Griffin rejects that method.  In fact, his understanding of revelation is an ongoing process, insight as part of the creative and spontaneous freedom of living in openness to God’s spirit.

His theology is conservative in content because it rests upon certain primary doctrines of the Christian gospel (good news) “such as God’s creation of the world, God as actively present in it, and divinely-given life after death.”

For those unfamiliar with modern theological thinking that is not bound by a particular church’s teachings and respects science, Griffin’s method might at first seem unusual.  As one trained in theology and philosophy, I can assure you it is not.  His process of reasoning accords with the best scholarship in those disciplines, but one has to take the time to enter into its postmodern worldview that positions many of the conundrums of traditional religious thinking within a new framework, one that Griffin calls postmodern naturalism where “divine influence must be understood as part of the normal cause-effect relations, not an exception to them.”

Griffin takes on many of the great issues that have perplexed inquiring minds: the problem of evil, creation, truth, human freedom, God’s so-called omnipotence, miracles, life after death, out-of-body experiences, etc. Whether you end up agreeing with all his reasoning or not, you will be challenged to assess your thinking.  I find his systematic theological analyses to be brilliant and always intriguing.

But the point of his systematic theology is to bring us to his analysis of the demonic nature of the American Empire and the need for Christians and people of all faiths to resist it.  In my opinion, his argument for the demonic as a real power in the world, and that the United States is in its grip, is true.  He says:

Can we look at the past century of our world without thinking that the human race must be under the influence of such a power?  The twentieth century was by far the bloodiest century in history, with unprecedented slaughter and genocide, and yet we have taken no steps to overcome the war-system of settling disputes.  Americans created nuclear weapons and then, when we learned how deadly they are, built thousands more, until we had the world wired to be destroyed many times over.  After we learned that a relatively modest exchange of nuclear weapons could initiate a “nuclear winter,” leading to the death of human civilization and other higher forms of life, we still did not abolish them.

He gives the historical background to the American belief in its divine mission, the idea of Manifest Destiny, and the city on the hill nonsense about America being God’s country whose mission was to spread democracy around the world.  He quotes George W. Bush saying, in his state-of-the-union address two months before laying waste to Iraq based on lies, “The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to humanity.”

Melville couldn’t have said it better through the mouth of mad Ahab.  Mad Ahab, mad Bill Clinton, mad George, mad Lyndon Johnson, the list goes on and on.  Madmen all, God’s men in their minds, or perhaps just lying madmen playing with our minds, God be damned.

Griffin lays it all out – Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Vietnam 1954-73, Indonesia 1965, etc.  – all the blood, the massacres, the evil empire doing its nonstop handiwork across the world.

He does, however, omit a crucial element of the demonic at work here in the U.S., as if something is blocking him from recognizing it, some shadow blocking his sight.  It is a strange omission.  It is as if his vision is focused outward on all the evil the American government inflicts on the world, but here in his own house, he cannot see the demonic at work.

He nowhere mentions the American government’s assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK, all martyrs to the unspeakable truth that this country is in the grip of evil killers who will stop at nothing to silence the voices of genuine peacemakers who have opposed the American Empire. Their deaths opened the door to hell on earth for millions of others around the world.

He correctly catalogues the long list of U. S. atrocities, false flag attacks, coup d’états, immoral and endless wars; gives dates; draws a damning picture of a country in the grip of demonic forces intent on savagely killing innocents wherever it can find them.  He shows conclusively that the United States is the Roman Empire updated and outfitted to kill millions with sophisticated weapons and to spread its imperialistic power with evil intent.

He makes an open and shut case that if one wishes to follow the Christian Gospel, one must act in opposition to this evil empire.  But he forgets that the crucifixion is also a domestic affair, and the homegrown rebels must be eliminated first.

Even the wisest of men, such as the David Ray Griffin, have their Achilles heels.

But despite that omission, or maybe because of it since it shows us how flawed we all are, The Christian Gospel for Americans is a brilliant clarion call to action.

Read it.  It will rock your world.  It is gospel.

The War in Questions

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Making Sense of the Age of Carnage

By Tom Engelhardt

Source: TomDispatch.com

My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions?

Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention?

I mean, if another great power had been so fruitlessly fighting a largely undeclared set of conflicts under the label of “the war on terror” for so long, if it had wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars with no end in sight and next to no one in that land was spending much time debating or discussing the matter, what would you think? If nothing else, you’d have a few questions about that, right?

Well, so many years later, I do have a few that continue to haunt me, even if I see them asked practically nowhere and, to my frustration, can’t really answer them myself, not to my satisfaction anyway. In fact, since 2001 — with the exception of the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq when America’s streets suddenly filled with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators asking a range of questions (“How did USA’s oil get under Iraq’s sand?” was a typical protest sign of that moment) — our never-ending wars have seldom been questioned in this country. So think of what follows not as my thoughts on the war in question but on the war in questions.

The Age of Carnage

In October 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush launched a bombing campaign not just against al-Qaeda, a relatively small group partially holed up in Afghanistan, but the Taliban, an Islamist outfit that controlled much of the country. It was a radical decision not just to target the modest-sized organization whose 19 hijackers, most of them Saudis, had taken out almost 3,000 Americans with a borrowed “air force” of commercial jets, but in the phrase of the moment to “liberate” Afghanistan. These days, who even remembers that, by then, Washington had already fought a CIA-directed, Saudi-backed (and partially financed) war against the Soviet Union in that country for a full decade (1979-1989). To take on the Red Army then, Washington funded, armed, and supported extremist Islamist groups, some of which would still be fighting in Afghanistan (against us) in the twenty-first century.

In the context of that all-American war, a rich young Saudi, Osama bin Laden, would, of course, form al-Qaeda, or “the base.” In 1989, Washington watched as the mighty Red Army limped out of Afghanistan, the “bleeding wound” as its leader then called it. (Afghanistan wasn’t known as “the graveyard of empires” for nothing.) In less than two years, that second great power of the Cold War era would implode, an event that would be considered history’s ultimate victory by many in Washington. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who first committed the U.S. to its Afghan Wars, would, as last century ended, sum things up this way: “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Afghanistan itself would be left in ruins as Washington turned its attention elsewhere, while various local warlords fought it out and, in response, the extremist Taliban rose to power.

Now, let me jump ahead a few years. In 2019, U.S. air power expended more munitions (bombs and missiles) on that country than at any time since figures began to be kept in 2006. Despite that, during the last months of 2019, the Taliban (and other militant groups) launched more attacks on U.S.-and-NATO-trained-and-financed Afghan security forces than at any time since 2010 when (again) records began to be kept. And it tells you something about our American world that, though you could have found both those stories in the news if you were looking carefully, neither was considered worthy of major coverage, front-page headlines, or real attention. All these years later, it won’t surprise you to know that such ho-hum reporting is just par for the course. And when it comes to either of those two on-the-record realities, you certainly would be hard-pressed to find a serious editorial expression of outrage or much of anything else about them in the media.

At 18-plus years or, if you prefer to combine Washington’s two Afghan wars, 28-plus years, we’re talking about the longest American war in history. The Civil War lasted four years. The American part of World War II, another four. The Korean War less than four (though it never officially ended). The Vietnam War, from the moment the first significant contingent of U.S. advisors arrived, 14, and from the moment the first major U.S. troop contingents arrived, perhaps a decade. In the Trump era, as those air strikes rise, there has been a great deal of talk about possible “peace” and an American withdrawal from that country.  Peace, however, has now seemingly come to be defined in Washington as a reduction of American forces from approximately 12,000 to about 8,500 (and that’s without counting either private military contractors or CIA personnel there).

Meanwhile, of course, the war on terror that began in Afghanistan now stretches from the Philippines across the Greater Middle East and deep into the heart of Africa. Worse yet, it still threatens to expand into a war of some sort with Iran — and that, mind you, is under the ministrations of an officially “antiwar” president who has nonetheless upped American military personnel in the Middle East to record levels in recent years.

Of course, this is a story that you undoubtedly know fairly well. Who, in a sense, doesn’t? But it’s also a story that, so many years and so much — to use a word once-favored by our president — “carnage” later, should raise an endless series of disturbing and unnerving questions here. And that it doesn’t, should raise questions in itself, shouldn’t it?

Still, in a country where opposition to endless war seems constantly to falter or fade out amid a media universe in which Donald Trump’s latest tweet can top any war news, it seems potentially useful to raise some of those questions — at least the ones that occur to me — and perhaps for you to do the same. Isn’t it time, after all, for Americans to ask a few questions about war, American-style, in what might be thought of as the post-9/11 age of carnage?

In any case, here are six of mine to which, as I said, I don’t really have the answers. Maybe you do.

Here goes:

  1. When the Bush administration launched that invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 and followed it up with an invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, did we, in some curious fashion, really invade and occupy ourselves? Of course, in these years, across the Greater Middle East and Africa, the U.S. played a remarkable role in creating chaos in country after country, leading to failed states, displaced people in staggering numbers, economic disarray, and the spread of terror groups. But the question is: Did the self-proclaimed most exceptional and indispensable nation on the planet do a version of the same thing to itself in the process? After all, by 2016, the disarray in this country was striking enough and had spread far enough, amid historic economic inequality, social division, partisan divides, and growing anger, that Americans elected as president (if not quite by a majority) a man who had run not on American greatness but on American decline. He promised to make this country great again. (His declinist credentials were not much noted at the time, except among the heartland Americans who voted for him.) So, ask yourself: Would President Donald Trump have been possible if the Bush administration had simply gone after al-Qaeda on September 12, 2001, and left it at that? Since January 2017, under the tutelage of that “very stable genius,” the U.S. political (and possibly global economic) system has, of course, begun to crack open. Is there any connection to those forever wars?
  2. Has there ever been a truly great power in history, still at or near the height of its militarily prowess, that couldn’t win a war? Sure, great imperial powers from the Romans to the Chinese to the British sometimes didn’t win specific wars despite their seeming military dominance, but not a single one? Could that be historically unprecedented and, if so, what does it tell us about our moment? How has the country proclaimed by its leaders to have the finest fighting force the world has ever known won nothing in more than 18 years of unceasing global battle?
  3. How and why did the “hearts and minds” factor move from the nationalist left in the twentieth century to the Islamist right in the twenty-first? The anti-colonial struggles against imperial powers that culminated in America’s first great losing war in Vietnam (think of Korea as kind of a tie) were invariably fought by leftist and communist groups. And whatever the military force arrayed against them, they regularly captured — in that classic Vietnam-era phrase — “the hearts and minds” of what were then called “Third World” peoples and repeatedly outlasted far better armed powers, including, in the case of Vietnam, the United States. In a word, they had the moxie in such conflicts and it didn’t matter that, by the most obvious measures of military power, they were at a vast disadvantage. In the twenty-first century, similar wars are still being fought in a remarkably comparable fashion, Afghanistan being the most obvious.  Again, the weaponry, the money, everything that might seem to pass for the works has been the property of Washington and yet that ability to win local “hearts and minds” has remained in the hands of the rebels. But what I wonder about is how exactly that moxie passed from the nationalist left to the extremist religious right in this century and what exactly was our role, intended or not, in all this?
  4. When it comes to preparations for war, why can’t we ever stop? After all, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in 1991, the United States essentially had no enemies left on the planet. Yet Washington continued essentially an arms race of one with a finish line so distant — the bomber of 2018, Earth-spanning weapons systems, and weaponry for the heavens of perhaps 2050 — as to imply eternity. The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex surrounding it, including mega-arms manufacturers, advanced weapons labs, university science centers, and the official or semi-official think tanks that churned out strategies for future military domination, went right on without an enemy in sight. In fact, in late 2002, preparing for his coming invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush had to cook up an “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, two of which were mortal enemies and the third unrelated in any significant way to either of them — as a justification for what was to come, militarily speaking. Almost 20 years later, investing as much in its military as the next seven countries combined, updating and upgrading its nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1.7 trillion in the coming decades (and having just deployed a new “low-yield” nuclear weapon), and still investing staggering sums in its planes, tanks, aircraft carriers, and the like, the U.S. military now seems intent (without leaving its forever wars) on returning to the era of the Cold War as well. Face-offs against Russia and China are now the military order of the day in what seems like a déjà-vu-all-over-again situation. I’m just curious, but isn’t it ever all over?
  5.  How can Washington’s war system and the military-industrial complex across the country continue to turn failure in war into success and endless dollars at home? Honestly, the one thing in America that clearly works right now is the U.S. military (putting aside those wars abroad). We may no longer invest in domestic infrastructure, but in that military and the giant corporate weapons makers that go with it? You bet! They are the true success stories of the twenty-first century if you’re talking about dollars invested, weaponry bought, and revolving doors greased. On the face of it, failure is the new success and few in this country seem to blink when it comes to any of that. How come?
  6. Why doesn’t the reality of those wars of ours ever really seem to sink in here?  This, to my mind, is at least partially a question about media coverage. Yes, every now and then (as with the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers last December), America’s forever wars briefly break through and get some attention. And yes, if you’re a war-coverage news jockey, you can find plenty of daily reports on aspects of our wars in the media. But isn’t it surprising how much of that coverage is essentially a kind of background hum, like Muzak in an elevator? Unless the president personally decides to drone assassinate an Iranian major general and prospective future leader of that country, our wars simply drone on, barely attended to (unless, of course, you happen to be in the U.S. military or a military spouse or child). Eighteen years of failed wars and so many trillions of dollars later, wouldn’t you have expected something else?

So those are my six questions, the most obvious things that puzzle me about what may be the strangest aspect of this American world of ours, those never-ending wars and the system that goes with them. To begin to answer them, however, would mean beginning to think about ourselves and this country in a different way.

Perhaps much of this would only make sense if we were to start imagining ourselves or at least much of the leadership crew, that infamous “Blob,” in Washington, as so many war addicts. War — the failing variety — is evidently their drug of choice and not even our “antiwar” president can get off it. Think of forever war, then, as the opioid not of the masses but of the ruling classes.

 

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.

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

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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

https://youtu.be/ZADmzHGfVGQ

https://youtu.be/eOWRLoNOhRs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIV3Cs-klPg

Can the Progressive-“Conspiracy” Divide be Bridged?

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By John Kirby

Source: Off Guardian

People from a variety of advocacy communities who tackle issues ranging from the assassinations of the 1960’s to vaccine safety are rightly upset by a recent NBC News.com op-ed authored by Lynn Parramore, a progressive journalist known for her insightful pieces for Alternet and other outlets.

In the article, Parramore argues that those who espouse “conspiracy theories” might be displaying “narcissistic personality traits,” suffer from “low self-esteem,” and share a “negative view of humanity.” Various studies are cited in support of this claim.

As a filmmaker acquainted both with the author of the op-ed as well as a number of people from the communities under fire, I hope it’s possible to dispel some of the misconceptions on all sides and even find some common ground.

At the outset, it should be acknowledged that Parramore’s piece is an uncharacteristically harsh ad hominem smear, taking its place in a long line of similar attacks on people who have dared question—sometimes at great personal cost—a whole range of suspect official narratives over many years.

But Parramore and many journalists like her are neither assets of an intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media; she is fully conscious of the ways in which power and wealth can be used collusively (one might even say conspiratorially) to deceive and abuse the public.

So what accounts for a piece like this one?  Why does it rankle a progressive like Parramore so intensely when she hears someone mention that the U.S. military-industrial complex had the most to gain from the September 11th attacks, or that Big Pharma may be applying the same racketeering techniques to the ever-expanding vaccination schedule she discovered at play in the opioid crisis?

Those of us who have labored long to publicize state crimes against democracy have our own list of the psychological, political, and economic factors that may be preventing smart people from seeing evidence that we regard as overwhelming.

The primary difficulty may lie in just how smart and thoroughly educated many of these writers are: no one who has spent a lifetime looking into the way the world works wants to think they might have missed something big.

And as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the more educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even journalists outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and prejudices.

Which brings us to Parramore’s embrace of the term “conspiracy theory.”   Once a neutral and little-used phrase, “conspiracy theory” was infamously weaponized in 1967 by a memo from the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide.

Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the “lone nut” theory of President Kennedy’s assassination, and concerned that “[c]onspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization,” the agency directed its officers to “discuss the publicity problem with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and to “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

As Kevin Ryan writes, and various analyses have shown:

In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week.”

While it turns out that Parramore knows something about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as “something that requires no consideration because it is obviously not true.”  This embeds a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on.

Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who attempt to connect belief in “conspiracy theories” to “narcissistic personality traits,” are not immune to efforts to manipulate the wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they proceed; in this case, the assumption was provided by an interested Federal agency.

And what of their suggested diagnosis?

The DSM-5’s criteria for narcissism include “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity…a need for admiration and lack of empathy.”  My experience in talking to writers and advocates who—to mention a few of the subjects Parramore cites—seek justice in the cases of the political murders of the Sixties, have profound concerns about vaccine safety, or reject the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, does not align with that characterization.

On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned.

A number of them have arrived at their views through painful, direct experience, like the loss of a friend or the illness of a child, but far from having a “negative view of humanity,” as Parramore writes, most hold a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it.

In that regard, they share a great deal in common with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what’s best for our children, and none of us want a world ruled by unaccountable political-economic interests.

If we want to achieve that world, then we should work together to promote speech that is free from personal attacks on all sides. Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled “false and misleading” on major social media platforms.

Who will decide what is false and what is true?

In the case of vaccines, there is actually no scientific consensus that they are safe—only a state-media consensus, emanating from groups like the CDC, which act as sales agents for Big Pharma.

A terrible precedent is being set, and both unfettered scientific inquiry and free speech are suffering greatly. Today it is vaccines and “conspiracy theories” that are being banned and labeled “dangerous” by the FBI. What will we be prevented, scared, or shamed away from discussing tomorrow?

President Kennedy said:

a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that so frighten the powers-that-be. Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.

 

John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker. His latest project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may have led to their deaths.

The Forever War Is So Normalized That Opposing It Is “Isolationism”

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

After getting curb stomped on the debate stage by Tulsi Gabbard, the campaign for Tim “Who the fuck is Tim Ryan?” Ryan posted a statement decrying the Hawaii congresswoman’s desire to end a pointless 18-year military occupation as “isolationism”.

“While making a point as to why America can’t cede its international leadership and retreat from around the world, Tim was interrupted by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard,” the statement reads. “When he tried to answer her, she contorted a factual point Tim was making— about the Taliban being complicit in the 9/11 attacks by providing training, bases and refuge for Al Qaeda and its leaders. The characterization that Tim Ryan doesn’t know who is responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is simply unfair reporting. Further, we continue to reject Gabbard’s isolationism and her misguided beliefs on foreign policy. We refuse to be lectured by someone who thinks it’s ok to dine with murderous dictators like Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad who used chemical weapons on his own people.”

Ryan’s campaign is lying. During an exchange that was explicitly about the Taliban in Afghanistan, Ryan plainly said “When we weren’t in there, they started flying planes into our buildings.” At best, Ryan can argue that when he said “they” he had suddenly shifted from talking about the Taliban to talking about Al Qaeda without bothering to say so, in which case he obviously can’t legitimately claim that Gabbard “contorted” anything he had said. At worst, he was simply unaware at the time of the very clear distinction between the Afghan military and political body called the Taliban and the multinational extremist organization called Al Qaeda.

More importantly, Ryan’s campaign using the word “isolationism” to describe the simple common sense impulse to withdraw from a costly, deadly military occupation which isn’t accomplishing anything highlights an increasingly common tactic of tarring anything other than endless military expansionism as strange and aberrant instead of normal and good. Under our current Orwellian doublespeak paradigm where forever war is the new normal, the opposite of war is no longer peace, but isolationism. This removal of a desirable opposite of war from the establishment-authorised lexicon causes war to always be the desirable option.

This is entirely by design. This bit of word magic has been employed for a long time to tar any idea which deviates from the neoconservative agenda of total global unipolarity via violent imperialism as something freakish and dangerous. In his farewell address to the nation, war criminal George W Bush said the following:

“In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”

A few months after Bush’s address, Antiwar‘s Rich Rubino wrote an article titled “Non-Interventionism is Not Isolationism“, explaining the difference between a nation which withdraws entirely from the world and a nation which simply resists the temptation to use military aggression except in self defense.

“Isolationism dictates that a country should have no relations with the rest of the world,” Rubino explained. “In its purest form this would mean that ambassadors would not be shared with other nations, communications with foreign governments would be mainly perfunctory, and commercial relations would be non-existent.”

“A non-interventionist supports commercial relations,” Rubino contrasted. “In fact, in terms of trade, many non-interventionists share libertarian proclivities and would unilaterally obliterate all tariffs and custom duties, and would be open to trade with all willing nations. In addition, non-interventionists welcome cultural exchanges and the exchange of ambassadors with all willing nations.”

“A non-interventionist believes that the U.S. should not intercede in conflicts between other nations or conflicts within nations,” wrote Rubino. “In recent history, non-interventionists have proved prophetic in warning of the dangers of the U.S. entangling itself in alliances. The U.S. has suffered deleterious effects and effectuated enmity among other governments, citizenries, and non-state actors as a result of its overseas interventions. The U.S. interventions in both Iran and Iraq have led to cataclysmic consequences.”

Calling an aversion to endless military violence “isolationism” is the same as calling an aversion to mugging people “agoraphobia”. Yet you’ll see this ridiculous label applied to both Gabbard and Trump, neither of whom are isolationists by any stretch of the imagination, or even proper non-interventionists. Gabbard supports most US military alliances and continues to voice full support for the bogus “war on terror” implemented by the Bush administration which serves no purpose other than to facilitate endless military expansionism; Trump is openly pushing regime change interventionism in both Venezuela and Iran while declining to make good on his promises to withdraw the US military from Syria and Afghanistan.

Another dishonest label you’ll get thrown at you when debating the forever war is “pacifism”. “Some wars are bad, but I’m not a pacifist; sometimes war is necessary,” supporters of a given interventionist military action will tell you. They’ll say this while defending Trump’s potentially catastrophic Iran warmongering or promoting a moronic regime change invasion of Syria, or defending disastrous US military interventions in the past like Iraq.

This is bullshit for a couple of reasons. Firstly, virtually no one is a pure pacifist who opposes war under any and all possible circumstances; anyone who claims that they can’t imagine any possible scenario in which they’d support using some kind of coordinated violence either hasn’t imagined very hard or is fooling themselves. If your loved ones were going to be raped, tortured and killed by hostile forces unless an opposing group took up arms to defend them, for example, you would support that. Hell, you would probably join in. Secondly, equating opposition to US-led regime change interventionism, which is literally always disastrous and literally never helpful, is not even a tiny bit remotely like opposing all war under any possible circumstance.

Another common distortion you’ll see is the specious argument that a given opponent of US interventionism “isn’t anti-war” because they don’t oppose all war under any and all circumstances. This tweet by The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan is a perfect example, claiming that Gabbard is not anti-war because she supports Syria’s sovereign right to defend itself with the help of its allies from the violent extremist factions which overran the country with western backing. Again, virtually no one is opposed to all war under any and all circumstances; if a coalition of foreign governments had helped flood Hasan’s own country of Britain with extremist militias who’d been murdering their way across the UK with the ultimate goal of toppling London, both Tulsi Gabbard and Hasan would support fighting back against those militias.

The label “anti-war” can for these reasons be a little misleading. The term anti-interventionist or non-interventionist comes closest to describing the value system of most people who oppose the warmongering of the western empire, because they understand that calls for military interventionism which go mainstream in today’s environment are almost universally based on imperialist agendas grabbing at power, profit, and global hegemony. The label “isolationist” comes nowhere close.

It all comes down to sovereignty. An anti-interventionist believes that a country has the right to defend itself, but it doesn’t have the right to conquer, capture, infiltrate or overthrow other nations whether covertly or overtly. At the “end” of colonialism we all agreed we were done with that, except that the nationless manipulators have found far trickier ways to seize a country’s will and resources without actually planting a flag there. We need to get clearer on these distinctions and get louder about defending them as the only sane, coherent way to run foreign policy.

About Those Dancing Israelis

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By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Another Day in the Empire

On Friday Whitney Webb of Mint Press News wrote about new information on the 9/11 “Dancing Israelis” and their connection to Israeli intelligence. 

You may not remember the Dancing Israelis incident. It didn’t fit the larger narrative concocted in the days, months, and years that followed that tragic event. 

That narrative dwelt exclusively on Osama bin Laden and Islamic evil-doers in Afghan caves plotting a major terror attack because “they hate our (sic) freedoms,” while ignoring or omitting information that contradicted that narrow and obviously absurd conclusion. There is a wealth of information demonstrating how the attacks could not have occurred as the government and its corporate media insist.

Webb’s post adds damning new information to the now largely forgotten Dancing Israelis incident. Documents released through a Freedom of Information request reveals at least two members of the group were Mossad agents, others members of the IDF; the moving company they supposedly worked for was an intelligence front; the moving company van the Israelis used tested positive for explosives. Other suspicious items were found in this cut-out business van, including boxcutters and cash-stuffed socks. 

For more damning evidence in direct conflict with the official narrative and its conclusions, read Webb’s article. It’s an eye-opener. 

For the last decade and a half, I have argued that the official narrative is a rather clumsy cover-up designed to protect the real perpetrators of 9/11—the triumvirate of terror: the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. 

As we know, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were planned before September 11, 2001 (seeNew Documents Show Bush Administration Planned War In Iraq Well Before 9/11/2001 and Bush team ‘agreed plan to attack the Taliban the day before September 11’). 

These invasions required a “new Pearl Harbor,” as pointed out by the neocons in a paper titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. 

In 2002, months before the illegal invasion of Iraq, investigative journalist and filmmaker John Pilger wrote:

The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the “new Pearl Harbor”, described as “the opportunity of ages”. The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and “think-tanks” were established to avenge the American “defeat” in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a “peace dividend” following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

I don’t believe this “opportunity” simply fell in the lap of the neocons by happenstance. It was manufactured and has multiple goals—a hegemonic drive in the Middle East (in the name of neoliberalism masquerading as democracy), bolstering the racist Zionists with weapons and stolen taxpayer money, and protecting the vile and psychopathic Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia and selling them weapons to kill Yemeni civilians. 

It is also a tool to create a massive surveillance apparatus, feed more obscene billions into the “defense” (war) budget, and basically harden the edges of a soft “public-private” fascism (corporatism, as Mussolini knew) that has ruled since the establishment of the national security state directly following the Second World War.

As Webb points out, Zionist Israelis are the ones who “hate us for our freedoms,” and they consider the American people a passel of naive chumps easily tricked into sacrificing their lives and treasure in wars that benefit Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

“Indeed, it goes without saying that the aftermath of 9/11—which involved the U.S. leading a destructive effort throughout the Middle East—has indeed benefited Israel. Many of the U.S.’ post-9/11 ‘nation-building’ efforts have notably mirrored the policy paper ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,’ which was authored by American neoconservatives—PNAC members among them—for Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister,” writes Webb. 

Webb’s incisive report on these recently released FBI documents should be read by all Americans. 

If you decide to read it, however, be forewarned: you will be denounced as a crazy American-hating conspiracy theorist—thus calling into question anything you say thereafter. In the months ahead, it is possible you will be tarred and feathered as an antisemite, an extremist, a terrorist.

The US will eventually adopt harsh measures like France and Germany to deal with critics of Israel and its apartheid system and slow-motion ethnic cleansing. US states are passing laws making it a crime to boycott Israel. 

This is the emergent “New Antisemitism” criminalizing all who dare criticize the Zionist state. This includes not only Holocaust denial, but also “ideological antisemitism,” that is arguing Israel’s race laws and its treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid. 

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it,” said George Orwell. 

As for an easily blindsided and brainwashed public, Orwell wrote: “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” 

Defending Julian Assange; Defending the Truth

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By Robert J. Burrowes

On 11 April 2019, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UK police and arrested for breaching a bail condition. See ‘Arrest update – SW1’. Upon arrival at a London police station, Julian was ‘further arrested’ on behalf of the United States government to satisfy an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the UK Extradition Act. See ‘UPDATE: Arrest of Julian Assange’.

Following a brief court hearing in which the extraordinary prejudice of the district judge was on clear display – see ‘Chelsea and Julian Are in Jail. History Trembles’ – Julian is now imprisoned in south London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for a preliminary extradition hearing on 2 May and the US must produce its case for requesting Julian’s extradition from the UK by 12 June but, as Nicholas Weaver reports, Julian could be in UK custody for years as the extradition is contested in court. See ‘The Wikileaks Case Is Just Beginning’.

Prior to his arrest, Julian had been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012, having been granted citizenship of Ecuador and asylum by that country because many people were well aware of the risk he faced if he was tried in a kangaroo court in the United States. This asylum, to which Julian was entitled under long-standing provisions of international law, had been granted by previous Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who clearly understood this law (and the moral principles on which it is based).

As a result of his recent arrest however, Julian is under threat of extradition to the United States so that he can face criminal prosecution/persecution – see the US indictment of Julian Assange or ‘Read the Julian Assange indictment’ – for his role in exposing the truth about US war crimes in Afghanistan (the Afghan War Diary) and Iraq (the Iraq War Logs), as did The Guardian and The New York Times, by publishing leaked evidence of these crimes – including the ‘Collateral Murder’ video – as well as publishing evidence of widespread government corruption on the WikiLeaks website. It was this threat of persecution by US authorities that led Julian to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the first place.

However, since the election in Ecuador on 24 May 2017 of the criminal and cowardly president Lenín Moreno, Julian’s asylum has been under threat and the conditions of his stay in the Embassy have rapidly deteriorated. This is because Moreno has been anxious to divert public attention from the spotlight of corruption currently shining directly on him – see ‘Ecuador National Assembly to Start Corruption Probe of Moreno’ – and to secure the loans offered as bribes by US officials while capitulating to US government pressure to illegally terminate Julian’s political asylum. See ‘Ecuador Bowed to US Pressure, Violated Law – Assange’s Associate’ and ‘WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested, Activists Rally to Stop US Extradition’.

Of course, the criminal and cowardly nature of Moreno’s action is highlighted by the fact that the decision of the Ecuadorian government to terminate Julian’s asylum was done in violation of article 79 of Ecuador’s constitution which forbids extradition of its own citizens. See ‘Republic of Ecuador Constitution of 2008’. As Moreno’s predecessor, Rafael Correa noted simply in one Facebook post: ‘Moreno is a corrupt man’. See ‘Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest’.

Unfortunately, as further evidence of its function as an elite agent, rather than facilitating free speech, Facebook promptly ‘unpublished’ Correa’s Facebook page. Clearly, Moreno’s corruption is not a subject that Facebook wants advertised. See ‘Facebook Removes Page of Ecuador’s Former President on Same Day as Assange’s Arrest’. Still, it should be pointed out, Twitter’s function as an elite agent is no different. See ‘Twitter Restricts Account of Julian Assange’s Mother’.

Naturally enough, despite elite efforts to control the narrative, many people and organizations around the world have been outraged at the treatment of Julian (as well as other truthful journalists and whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, who has recently been imprisoned yet again, and Edward Snowden) who act courageously on the basis that the public has a right to know about the criminality of their governments as well as to know the truth generally.

As long ago as 5 February 2016, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at the United Nations issued a statement in which they ‘called on the Swedish and British authorities to end Mr. Assange’s deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation’ noting that its opinions are ‘legally-binding to the extent that they are based on binding international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)’. See ‘Julian Assange arbitrarily detained by Sweden and the UK, UN expert panel finds’.

Moreover, in recent days, UN officials have spoken openly of their serious concern if Julian’s asylum was illegally revoked. See ‘UN expert on privacy plans to visit Julian Assange’ and ‘Two UN Rapporteurs Are Concerned About Julian Assanges’ Situation’.

And just recently, on 11 April 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union issued its response to Julian’s arrest, noting that ‘Criminally prosecuting a publisher for the publication of truthful information would be a first in American history, and unconstitutional.’ The report added that ‘Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.’ See ‘ACLU Comment on Julian Assange Arrest’.

So once extradited, would Julian have any chance of defending himself with the truth? As US attorney Bill Simpich explains, Julian will be prevented from presenting the essential elements of his defense because ‘The [US] government doesn’t want a fair fight. In a fair fight, the government will lose.’ See ‘The Julian Assange Case: Revealing War Crimes Is Not a Crime’.

More bluntly, Jonathan Turley points out:

‘[T]he Justice Department is likely to move aggressively to strip Assange of his core defenses. Through what is called a motion in limine, the government will ask the court to declare that the disclosure of intelligence controversies is immaterial. This would leave Assange with only the ability to challenge whether he helped with passwords and little or no opportunity to present evidence of his motivations or the threat to privacy.

‘The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the famous Pentagon Papers case. He cannot discuss how Democratic and Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program.’ See ‘Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment’.

Hence, while the Ecuadorian, British and US governments are flagrantly violating the law in persecuting Julian, it is being left to individuals and civil society organizations to defend him and many are mobilizing to do so already.

As a result, people have signed petitions – see ‘Don’t extradite Assange!’ and ‘Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalism’ – some have participated in demonstrations at UK embassies and consulates around the world – see, for example, ‘Protesters Call on UK to #FreeAssange Outside British Embassy in DC’ – and others have engaged in other acts of solidarity as suggested, for example, by Julian’s mother Christine or on the website ‘Defend WikiLeaks’ and in this article: ‘Julian Assange Arrested, Take Action Now’.

Given the importance of defending our access to accurate information about our world, rather than the propaganda marketed as ‘news’ by the corporate media, it is worth reflecting on how best we can do this and, in doing so, defend people like Julian and Chelsea (who play such a vital role in giving us access to the truth in particular contexts) at the same time.

Hence, because of my own longstanding interest in developing thoughtfully-designed nonviolent strategies in our struggle to make our world one of peace, justice and ecological sustainability, let me suggest a strategic way forward that will honor the courage of Julian and Chelsea by maximizing the impact of their truth-telling on the longer-term struggles just mentioned while also taking separate action to provide some additional pressure to assist them in the short and medium terms.

In order to design this strategy well, let us first analyze the issue of why those who tell the truth are persecuted. If we do not understand, precisely, why this happens, we cannot respond powerfully.

Accurate Strategic Analysis Depends on Knowing the Truth

If we are to understand, accurately, the context and structural dimensions of a conflict (that is, the ‘big picture’ in which it is contained) so that we can identify and analyze the underlying drivers of the conflict in order to develop a coherent strategy to address these drivers, then the very first prerequisite is that we have truthful information. Without this truthful information, activists have zero prospect of accurately understanding and analyzing what is happening in the world (such as in relation to war and the climate catastrophe, for example).

Because the global elite is highly aware of the importance of the truth, it goes to enormous effort to make it difficult, if not impossible, to access the truth, particularly in certain critical contexts. And there are some classic historical examples, among many others, where not knowing the truth has allowed elites to inflict monumental atrocities in our name while crippling efforts to strategically mobilize opposition to these atrocities.

The most obvious examples of this phenomenon include ‘false flag’ attacks such as those conducted by US authorities and their allies on 9/11 as the prelude to launching their ‘war on terror’ which has caused immeasurable damage to, if not virtually destroyed, entire countries across west Asia and north Africa. If the truth about those behind the 9/11 attacks had been immediately available, rather than still ‘dribbling out’ nearly 20 years later, then it would have been far easier to mobilize resistance to the US-led wars on other countries and to campaign, strategically, for the profound changes needed to ensure that our world is spared the scourge of such atrocities in future. To access the definitive account of the overwhelming evidence in relation to 9/11 as a false flag attack, see 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation which is reviewed in ‘The Fakest Fake News: The U.S. Government’s 9/11 Conspiracy Theory’. For a long but incomplete list of false flag attacks, see ‘The Ever-Growing List of ADMITTED False Flag Attacks’.

So if we ask the question ‘Who played the primary role in deceiving us about 9/11 and molding the desired public response?’, the answer is that it was some key government, corporate, military and bureaucratic spokespeople and, particularly, the corporate media projecting the words of these official spokespeople far and wide. But if we ask the question ‘Who was controlling these spokespeople and the corporate media?’ the answer is ‘the global elite’.

This is because a primary function of the global elite, which it has long understood, is to create (using individuals employed within its think tanks as well as compliant academics) and maintain (through education systems, the entertainment industry and the corporate media) the dominant narrative in society so that the information available to the public is the information that the elite needs to shape public perception in favor of elite interests, such as perpetual war and chronic over-consumption, which ensure perpetuation of elite power, profit and privilege.

Hence, as you can see, people like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning and organizations like WikiLeaks represent a fundamental threat to elite power, profit and privilege precisely because their truth-telling functionally undermines the elite narrative, for example, that our ‘enemy’ is a bunch of terrorists somewhere rather than the global elite itself.

While the false flag examples offered above highlight how suppression of the truth disempowers activists and populations thus helping to minimize any effective mobilization in response, there are also a great many examples where the truth was critical to informing and helping to mobilize activists to resist injustice, in one form or another. For example, Kevin Zeese superbly illustrates the crucial importance of WikiLeaks in facilitating awareness of the truth during the uprisings in 2011 across north Africa and west Asia. See ‘Julian Assange: At the Forefront of 21st Century Journalism’.

In essence then, it is individuals like Julian and Chelsea, rather than the sycophantic editors, reporters and journalists working for the corporate media, who give us the information we need to know so that we can better understand how our dysfunctional and violent world works and campaign effectively to change it.

And so they are enemies of the elite who must be silenced and discredited, legally or otherwise.

If you would like to read other accounts by individuals who astutely warn us of the deeper implications of what is happening to Julian, see the recent articles by Chris Hedges ‘The Martyrdom of Julian Assange’ and John Pilger ‘The Assange Arrest Is a Warning from History’.

So what do we do?

Well, I believe we honor individuals like Julian and Chelsea by using the truths they reveal to us to develop and implement thoughtfully-designed nonviolent strategies to make our world one of peace, justice and ecological sustainability. This is why they risk paying (and are now paying) such a high personal price to get us the truth that must inform these struggles. But we can also assist courageous individuals like Julian and Chelsea in the short-term too. So let me also add to the suggestions made by others mentioned above.

If we are to make the most use of the truth that Julian and Chelsea have risked (and paid) so much to get to us, then we must campaign strategically. By doing this, as I just mentioned, we truly honor their efforts and sacrifice. So, for example, if you want to campaign to end the elite’s wars and destruction of our climate from which it profits so enormously, then consider doing it strategically. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. This site identifies, among other key elements of strategy, the two strategic aims and the basic list of strategic goals necessary to achieve these outcomes. See ‘Campaign Strategic Aims’.

Irrespective of whether or not you are keen on campaigning in this way, there is a fifteen-year strategy for tackling all elements of our environmental crisis in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

If you would like to tackle the problem at its core, consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ so that your children grow up with the conscience and courage of Julian and Chelsea. Unfortunately, individuals of their conscience and courage are incredibly rare in our world: not a powerful place to start in tackling a global elite that is utterly insane.

‘Insane?’ you might ask. Remember this: the global elite and many of its political, corporate, bureaucratic, military and academic agents, spend their time planning and implementing strategies to kill people (using military violence and economic exploitation) to make a profit. Do you really believe that this is something that a sane person would spend their time doing? I know you have been inundated with propaganda throughout your life to make you accept (or ignore) the violence in our world without question but pause and ponder it now: is it really sane? Are we not capable, as a species, of organizing our world to achieve peace, justice and ecological sustainability? See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with a lot more detail in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Moreover, individuals who are not incredibly psychologically damaged do not manipulate elite institutions – such as the legal system: see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – to persecute powerful individuals like Julian and Chelsea. The conscience and courage of Julian and Chelsea are readily recognized by those who are not psychologically damaged: they are qualities of exceptional individuals whom we should honor.

If you would like to join the worldwide movement to end all violence, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

But we do not need to confine our acts of solidarity with Julian and Chelsea to those regarding strategies for profound change or the others mentioned above either. If you want to act powerfully in their support, consider the following five options as well and do as many as you can:

  1. Boycott The Guardian and The New York Times (because they were two of the original outlets that published material sourced from WikiLeaks but now hypocritically engage in the persecution of Julian and Chelsea). And suggest to others that they also boycott these media outlets.
  2. Boycott all media outlets (anywhere in the world) that advocate or support the arrest, trial and/or imprisonment of Julian and/or Chelsea. And suggest to others that they boycott these media outlets too. If you want the truth about our world, get it from news outlets like the one you are reading now.
  3. Boycott Facebook. And suggest to others that they boycott this medium too.
  4. Boycott Twitter. And suggest to others that they boycott this medium too.
  5. Write letters of solidarity to Julian and Chelsea. Tell them what you are doing to make best use of the truths they have revealed.

Given elite control of all political, economic, commercial, legal, social and media institutions of any consequence in our world, it will not be easy to liberate Julian (and, perhaps, even Chelsea) in the short term. UK and US elites may even conspire to secretly put Julian on a rendition flight to the US or simply be content with a protracted legal struggle which distracts many of us from the issues that Julian and Chelsea so courageously put in the spotlight.

For that reason, while we struggle to liberate them we can also struggle to liberate the vast number of other people who suffer the elite’s military violence and economic exploitation so that the efforts of Julian and Chelsea are not in vain.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.