Great Game playoff: Russia/Turkey vs Palestine/Israel

In Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams the new line-up of the players in the Great Game was set out. Here, Eric Walberg considers the implications for the Middle East.

A vital playing field in today’s Great Game is Palestine/Israel, where again there is a tentative meeting of political minds between Russia and Turkey. In defiance of the US and much of Europe, both endorsed the Goldstone report into atrocities committed during Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008, where 100 Palestinians died for every Israeli casualty. Neither government is captive to Israel in the way European and US governments are, though they both have important economic relations with Israel.

Israeli dissident writer Israel Shamir commended the Turkish leaders at a conference in Ankara in December: "Your president, Mr Gul, said a few days ago to our president, Mr Peres, that he will not visit Israel while the siege of Gaza continues. Turkey is no longer an American colony. You stopped joint air force exercises with Israel and the US. You expressed your clear anger over the horrors of Gaza. Now you pay more attention to the area where you live; you play an important role already and are destined to play an even greater role. So much depends on you! We feel it every day in Palestine."

He called on Turkey, as inheritor of the Ottoman-era responsibility for Palestine, to follow the lead of the Spanish and British judges who issued arrest warrants for Chilean General Pinochet and Israeli prime ministerTzipi Livni for murder, and issue an arrest warrant for the infamous Captain R, accused of murdering a Palestinian child Iman Al-Hams, but feted in Israel as a hero. "A Turkish warrant for his arrest should await him wherever he goes," just as "according to Israeli law, if a Turk does wrong to a Jew in Turkey, he may be snatched, arrested, tried and punished in Israel. Turkey should introduce a symmetrical law, covering offences against Palestinians who otherwise are not protected by law."

Though unlikely, this would be wildly popular in Turkey. Similarly, unlike brainwashed Westerners fed daily doses of pro-Israeli media, Turks and most Russians have no use for the Zionist project. True, over one million Russians took up the tantalising offer of instant Israeli citizenship in search of a better life, qualifying as Jewish merely via marriage or with as little as one grandparent racially Jewish. But, despite the chauvinism of the Russian-Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, many of these Russian Israelis, too, have no use for the Zionist project, with its innate racism, some even marrying Palestinians. Many are returning to Russia, bitter at the way they are treated by sabra (Jews born in Israel). The natural sympathy of these and non-Jewish Russians is for the Palestinians.

The Soviet Union was one of the first states to recognise the state of Palestine after the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, and Russia has maintained that position. As Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki said during a visit to Moscow last year, the “fact there is a Palestinian embassy in Moscow is a sign of the strength of our relationship.” Visiting Russia a week after the Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman, he found the Russian position on the peace process and the question of Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories unchanged.

As a member of the so-called “quartet” of negotiators (along with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations), Russia has stuck to the principles of the “road map” for peace, which requires Israel to freeze expansion of settlements in the occupied territories as a condition of further talks.

Russia has 16 million Muslims, about 12 per cent of the population, and Western-style Islamophobia -- and, the flip side, Judophilia -- is largely absent. It recently attended the Organisation of Islamic Conference as an observer and expressed interest in joining. The problem with asserting a clear policy towards Muslim countries, including Turkey, is of course the tragedy of Chechnia and the persistence of Islamist terrorism within Russia, resulting in anti-Muslim sentiment in Russian cities, which thrive on cheap labour from the “stans” and where much of the small-scale trade has been run by Chechens and other "blacks".

Shamir explains: "In Europe, if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia, Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church, or of Russian nationalism. The most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists."

As is the case in all countries of importance, the Zionists have their lobby in Russia too. Yevgenny Satanovsky (that's right), the president of the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, using the royal we, argues, “For us, there is no distinction between ‘rebels’ and ‘terrorists,’ as there is in Europe. They’re all part of the same jihad, and on this we agree with Israel.” But while busy promoting anti-Muslim sentiment among Russians, he fails to mention the support that his colleagues give to those very forces.

The Zionist footprint in Chechnia was hinted at during the scandal surrounding the murder of Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2008. In a Le Carre twist, Litvinenko converted to Islam on his deathbed, attended by exiled Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev and exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose Zionist credentials are well known. While the nature and extent of Mossad activity in the Caucasus is impossible to know for sure, there is no doubt that abetting terrorists is a useful way for Israel to apply pressure on the Russian government, and that Russian security forces do their best to keep track of it.

Turkey, Russia and Palestine all share a common geopolitical threat in the form of US and Israeli global plans, from NATO expansion eastward and US-Israeli plans to wage war on Iran, to the ongoing US-Israeli colonisation of what remains of Palestine. Just as Russia must struggle against NATO expansion eastward, intended to encircle and contain Russia, "if the US and Israel do take Iran, Turkey will be encircled and cut off. The fate of Palestine also depends on the fate of Tehran," writes Shamir.

Shamir congratulated the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) on its resounding reelection in 2007: "The East returns to God, and finds its own way. Istanbul has followed Gaza: the AKP-ruled Turkey will be a friend to Hamas-ruled Palestine, to Islamic Iran, to Orthodox Greece and Russia, to the religious anti-occupation forces of nearby Iraq. She will again take her place of pride as the centrepiece of the Eastern mosaic, while its pro-American and God-hating generals, the Turkish Dahlans, will creep back to their barracks. Faith in God unites us, while the nationalists had divided us." The shift in Turkish politics since then only confirms Shamir's words.

Is there is a pax russia unfolding? Ukraine is poised to turn back the anti-Russian policies of the Orange revolutionaries. Both Ukraine and Turkey depend heavily on Russian energy supplies, and their political course is responding to this as well as to an aversion to the aggressive nature of US foreign policy around the world. If Georgia rids itself of its pro-US anti-Russian president, suddenly US hegemony in the region evaporates.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite their bitter standoff now have good relations with both Turkey and Russia and will inevitably have to bury their hatchet as their conflict loses its ability to mobilise support in the interests of power politics. The Iranians sensibly refuse to cave in to Western and Israeli pressures. Their star can only rise as the US and Israel’s sets.

I smell a rat

Call my paranoid (I am). Call me distrustful (I am). Call me cynical (I am). But I still smell a rat and the stench of that rat is getting stronger every minute.

Take a look at this BBC article about the election results in the Ukraine.

Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were unusually blunt, warning the country's political leaders they should listen to the people's verdict and make sure the transition of power was peaceful (...) International monitors described the election as an impressive display of democracy. The OSCE's head of mission, Joao Soares, said Ukraine's electoral commission had been transparent and unbiased. (...) The US embassy in Kiev described the election as "another step in the consolidation of Ukraine's democracy".

Are we really talking about the same Ukraine were the last presidential elections were "so bad" that all the Western observers unanimously supported the "Orange Revolution"?! Are we really to believe that after years of corruption and a raging economic crisis (since 2008 the national currency, the Hryvna, has lost 48% of its value) this election was squeaky clean?! What about the many complaints of the Tymoshenko camp who claims over that vote rigging occurred at 1000 polling stations? What about the allegations that at least one Tymoshenko observer was found dead? What about the allegation that pretty much all the vote in the East and South of the country was rigged?!

Keep in mind that unlike what happened recently in Iran, the result of the Ukrainian elections are very close: according to the BBC. with 99.94% of votes counted after Sunday's poll, Mr Yanukovych had won 48.94% to 45.48% for Mrs Tymoshenko. Since it is far easier to rig a narrow election than a landslide, why is nobody taking the time to ascertain whether Yanukovich did not "steal" this election as he supposedly did the last time? Why are all the protests of Tymoshenko ignored?!

Am I the only one smelling a big stinky rat here?!

Here is my interpretation of what is going on. The Empire's propaganda machine (no, not the corporate press, the "independent" "defenders" of "democracy" such as the NGOs, OSCE, etc.) is giving it's full support to Yanukovich and that can only mean one thing: the "Imperial High Command" considers Yanukovich as co-opted.

Can I prove this? Nope. Not only that, but I even consider it possible that Yanukovich himself is playing the same game as so many other politicians which the Empire considered co-opted and who used the Empire for their own goals only to better ditch it later.

So no, I don't know if Yanukovich has already become a USraelian puppet, but I bet you that the USralians think that he has.

As always, only time will show the truth of the matter.

The abject failure of the Ukrainian color-coded revolution

by Lisa karpova and Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey for Pravda.Ru

How things have changed. The People Power colour revolutions have spluttered and now faded away as reality starts to bite, as it becomes increasingly apparent that people are not easily duped by pie-in-the-sky promises and crucially, as it becomes blatantly obvious that each nation occupies a cultural space that has to be respected. It therefore comes as no surprise that Viktor Yanukovych has won the Ukrainian Presidential election against Yulia Tymoshenko. And even less of a surprise that the darling of the West, the pock-marked face of the Orange Revolution, outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko is a political nobody in no-man's land. The Ukrainians did not want to join NATO, the Ukrainians did not want to be colonised by the European Union. They want jobs, they want schools, they want hospitals, they want to eat.

The first results from exit polls would indicate a clear victory for Viktor Yanukovych with around 49.42% of the vote, with Yulia Timoshenko garnering around 44.46%, a lead of five points. Will we once again witness a sea of protesters in Independence Square, Kiev, chanting "Razom nas bahato! Nas ne podolaty!" (Together we are many! We cannot be defeated!), as was the case in November 2004? In a word, no. Independence Square is empty, the Orange revolution has run out of steam; in fact it never came to the boil.

Why? Because it never amounted to anything more than hype created by meddlesome Western influences which wanted Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine and the Ukrainians were used by the arms lobby and Yushchenko was the pawn, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

President Viktor Yushchenko stepped on thin ice the final days of the campaign: He named a controversial nationalist a "Hero of Ukraine." Only after collecting a humiliating 5% of the vote in the first round of the elections did he make his declaration. In Ukraine's most avidly Western-leaning, anti-Russian city, news that the rare honor had been bestowed on Stepan Bandera was met with jubilation. Disgust and dismay swept the Russian-speaking provinces, where Bandera is remembered for what he really was: a Nazi collaborator.

In a letter to Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, the Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed "deepest revulsion" over the decision to honor Bandera, "who collaborated with the Nazis at the beginning of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others."

Yushchenko has been a petty, inept, corrupt dictator. He lost almost all voter support during a long series of feuds with prime minister and one-time ally,Yulia Tymoshenko. They both engaged in a competition of who could undo the other's actions. The result: total disaster and imminent economic collapse for Ukraine.

In the January election, President Yushchenko received less than six per cent of the vote. For some reason. Firstly, Viktor Yushchenko is an academic. He belongs behind the cloistered walls of a University, not in real life. His foray into the real world saw him destroy any political credibility and saw his power base shrink from half of the electorate to a handful of people with poor judgement. Hence his total isolation from the people, his isolation in parliament.

Viktor Yushchenko's idea for the Ukrainian people was to take pot-shots at Moscow, hoping in the process to carve out a national identity. Blind to the problems that his pro-NATO stance would cause not only with Moscow but among the Ukrainians themselves (66% of the population are strongly opposed to any notion of joining the Organization), blind to the effects his russophobic measures would have (33% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue), blind to the fury his move to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol would cause, the result of his failed policies is staring him in the face.

Yushchenko's foolish policies saw Ukraine lose its energy subsidies from Russia and saw his country humiliated in the international community as the Ukrainians started stealing Russian energy supplies in transit to Western Europe. He armed Georgia in its murderous act of aggression against Russians, siding with the war criminal Saakashvili.

At home, he promised economic prosperity but shamefully mismanaged the economy to such an extent that the Hryvnia lost half its value and managed to become indebted to the IMF, receiving loans which always have neo-conservative and anti-social strings attached.

Where now?

Tymoshenko's calls of foul play have been dismissed as officials said they had not received any reports of serious violations during the voting. "The second round got underway smoothly, without blatant violations of public order," Volodymyr Mayevsky, the head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's public security department, told a news conference in Kyiv.

Petulant Tymoshenko called for street demonstrations, but apparently Ukrainians have had enough of her crying wolf constantly. The results of responding to her calls have turned out quite badly for them.

As all exit polls indicated no less than a 5 percent advantage for Viktor Yanukovich in the election, Tymoshenko's threats and sour grapes might throw the election into the courts. The Orange Revolution spelt five years of paralysis for Ukraine. It was an abject failure.
-------
Commentary: this is yet another opportunity to appreciate the fate which Venezuela and Iran have avoided thanks primarily to the people of these two countries which, unlike the Ukrainians, did not buy into the propaganda of the US color-coded revolution machine (check out Eva Gollinger's latest piece Colored Revolutions: A New Form of Regime Change, Made in USA for more info on this). Does this mean that the era of color-coded revolutions is finally over? I think that such optimism is still very premature.

Under the Obomb'ya Administration all the "imperial" budgets (aggression, subversion, covert operations, terrorism, sabotage, etc.) have gone up, not down. Furthermore, the Empire already had two major successes in less than one year: Honduras and Chile have fallen back into the ranks of US client states. Add to this that both Venezuela and Iran are showing signs of economic difficulties (mainly due to the falling prices of oil) and the outlook looks bleak.

Frankly, I think that both Venezuela and Iran will be tough to crack as both countries have a powerful security establishment which is fully aware that it is the target to a total struggle for survival. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that the CIA is running a huge and systematic program to co-opt key figures in the security structures of Iran and Venezuela. Both Iran and Venezuela are hard to invade, so a direct military invasion does not seem a doable option. That does, however, not mean that all "kinetic" options are off the table. In Iran a military aggression could be justified by the "nuclear" canard, in Venezuela by "support for terrorism". One thing is beyond any doubt: the Empire is clearly taking all the necessary step to prepare the region around Iran and Venezuela for a major military clash. That does not mean that the Empire will necessarily strike out, but it does mean that this option is still very much on the table and executable at any moment.

9/11 first responder recounts WTC7 collapse

Emergency warning for office workers

(Thanks for Truthseeker for a pointer to this wonderful video! VS)

Did you know? Gaza

Finkelstein says NO to Crocodile Tears

(I just saw this on Gilad's blog and it's too good to pass)

Note: the full movie can be downloaded from the Pirate Bay here: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5247499/American_Radical___The_Trials_Of_Norman_Finkelstein_-_AVI_-_GCJM

It is worth noting that unlike some pseudo-progressives or anarcho-capitalists, the producers of this movie are not threatening lawsuits about the so-called "illegal" downloads of their movie. Instead, they posted this message on The Pirate Bay:

Hello torrenters. I'm the owner of the film production company that released this film.

We're a tiny operation of four employees working out of a hole in the wall in Seattle. In this current economy, we're really fighting hard just to stay afloat - even big companies like Miramax are dying.

If you want us to be able to continue to deliver quality and controversial films like this one, we have to be able to make enough to survive.

Please consider buying this film:
http://arabfilm.com/item/509/

(As you can see, we can't even afford to hire a web designer.)

I can only urge everybody to either purchase this movie (even after seeing the torrented download) or send these folks a donation. These guys deserve our support and they need the $$$ to contine to make good movies. Let's give them a hand!

The Saker

Some thoughts of a newcomer to the 9/11 Truth movement

It has been about 6 months now since I wrote my first post here about the 9/11 Truth movement. Following this initial article, I posted another one trying to encourage my readers to go and dig for the facts by themselves. Hoping to encourage independent research, I have now posted some 9/11 links on this blog, and an RSS feed from 911Truth.org. So far, the reactions to the new "truther" orientation of the blog have been rather restrained. My sense is that some of you knew about all this all along, and some are politely refraining for expressing their disapproval for what they probably see as a useless exercise in "conspiracy theories". Fair enough. Having myself spent eight years being a "9/11 agnostic" I certainly can relate to the incredulity of those who believe that while the US government has plenty of ugly deeds on its conscience, the idea that 9/11 was some kind of "inside job" is really "too much".

Today, I would like to spell out here what exactly brought me around and made me into a committed "truther". The second thing I would like to do, is to give some "shortcuts" to those who are "on the fence" or confused about this entire topic.

Let's begin by the one thing which really opened my eyes. For this, I need to first identify the reasons for my previous 9/11 agnosticism.Basically - I believed that the US government could not have pulled off such a major operation as the covert installation of hundreds of tons of explosives inside WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 without this somehow becoming public. Likewise, I did not believe that having used at least three planes (2 in NY and the one which crashed in Shanksville) the putative "conspirators" would have chosen a rather convoluted "no plane" option to strike the Pentagon. Finally , I did believe very strongly that the USA "had it coming" for decades already and that an organization like al-Qaeda had clearly warned the USA that it would retaliate for the perceived occupation of Saudi Arabia by "infidels" and for the US support Israel. So I applied Occam's Razor and decided that there is no need to seek some really complex and convoluted solution when the simple and straightforward explanation made sense and seemed to be supported by all the facts.

This reasoning looked all fine and dandy to me until I came to a truly momentous realization: the "official theory" did not explain one major fact: there is absolutely no way that the planes could have brought down the three buildings in New York. Not only that, but the way the buildings fell simply cannot be explained by a gravitational collapse induced by fire.

Let me stress something crucial here: one need not have an explanation for HOW something happened if this something is observed and irrefutably established. Or, put in another way - the fact that somebody cannot explain a phenomenon is not a logical basis to dismiss or deny the phenomenon itself.

Let's take for example the following fact: the US government - through NIST - officially recognized the fact that the WTC7 building fell at a free-fall speed for 2,25 seconds (for a detailed discussion of this please check out the video which I posted here). Do those 2,25 seconds really matter? Hell yes!! What this means is that the US government admits that for 2,25 seconds WTC7 fell without any kind of resistance to slow it down and this, therefore, means that there was nothing under the collapsing section. So this begs an obvious question: since we now know that there was nothing under the collapsing section and since we also know that there was a steel frame building there seconds before the collapse - what happened in between those two events? There is only one possible answer to this question: the steel-framed section of the building which would have normally slowed down the collapsing section of the building was removed a) extremely rapidly b) symmetrically. There is only one technology which can do that: explosives.

The above is simply not a matter of opinion. This is a fact. Likewise, it is a fact that fires could not have removed a section of WTC7 the way it was observed. At this point, we are faced with two basic and mutually exclusive options:

a) to deny the reality of indisputably established facts
b) to accept the compelling logic of Conan Dolye's Sherlock Holmes who said: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - fires causing the observed collapse - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Furthermore, we also know that WTC1 and WTC2 could not have collapsed as a result of the combined effects of the impact of the planes and the subsequent fires (anyone doubting that should watch 9/11 Blueprint for Truth - a presentation by Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization which now counts over 1000 members).

Unlike the case of WTC7 for which we do have a de-facto government admission that only explosives could have cause the observed collapse, the case of WTC1 and WTC2 not yet elicited any kind of oblique admission by the US government. What Uncle Sam did was even more basic: its latest report officially analyzes the events leading up to the collapse, but does not look at anything which happened once the collapse was initiated. In other words - the government does not even have an explanation, theory or even hypothesis of what could have triggered the type of collapse which was actually observed by millions, if not billions, of people.

So let's now put it the simple and direct way: the ONLY explanation for the collapse of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 is a controlled demolition by pre-planted explosives. This is not "one of the" theories - it is the ONLY theory (a theory is an explanation which makes it possible to explain that which is observed). I need to repeat this again: the US government has already admitted that WTC7 did collapse at free fall speed for 2,25 seconds and the US government has simply no explanation at all for the any of the building collapses which happened on 9/11.

Since all the WTC center building were highly secure (especially WTC7 which had all the following organizations as tenants: DoD, CIA, FBI, IRS, USSS and many others) is unthinkable that any entity not affiliated with the US government could have covertly introduced hundreds of tons of high-explosives in these buildings, and most definitely not "al-Qaeda". Again, we need to turn to the compelling logic of Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - a non-US government entity bringing in tons of explosives into WTC1/WTC2/WTC7 without being caught - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

That's it.

That is all it takes to establish beyond reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an "inside job".

There is no need to explain all the seemingly unexplainable events which happened on that day, nor is there any need to explain HOW what we know happened was actually organized and executed. When a crime is committed, the forensic experts can establish that, say a murder was committed with a knife before the police investigators establish who did it, why or how. Put it differently, the fact that the police cannot establish motive, means and opportunity or charge a suspect beyond reasonable doubt does not mean that no murder happened.

This is why the all the numerous members of the 9/11 Truth movement all agree on one key demand: a new, independent and free, investigation into the events of 9/11 (conversely, those who oppose such an investigation are accessories to a clear case of obstruction of justice!).

What about the Pentagon?!

Here I need to caution any newcomers to the 9/11 Truth movement: the fact is that the 9/11 Truth movement is deeply divided on this issue. Many "truthers" are absolutely convinced that no plane ever hit the Pentagon, while many others are equally sure that only a plane could have caused the damage which was observed. The debate on this topic is so heated that both sides sometimes resort to exactly the same tactics as the other: dismissing eyewitnesses are "notorious unreliable" and accusing each other of being government plants, disinformation agents.

Let me candidly share my own view on this with you: I have seen many pictures of the damage on the Pentagon and I cannot imagine that an aircraft would simply vanish the way this one seemed to have vaporized itself. Not only that, but I think that a plane hitting a building at full speed would cause much more structural damage then what is actually seen on the photos. However, and this is a big however, I am not an expert on air crashes. Not only that, but the idea that whoever would have used 3 planes in NY would suddenly decide not to use one at the Pentagon makes no sense to me whatsoever. Nor do the "alternative" theories such as a cruise missile strike or a "bombing flyover" of the Pentagon by a mysteriously disappearing aircraft. On this issue I personally still remain a total 'agnostic' and I am quite willing to be convinced either way.

I am aware of the fact that some 9/11 truthers are constantly warning the rest of us that there is a real risk that the US government is deliberately muddying up the waters around the Pentagon attack to commit as many truthers as possible to a "no-plane" theory only to better ridicule us all by eventually releasing an indisputable video showing a plane hitting the Pentagon (and we know that they have many such unreleased videos). I think that this warning should be taken very seriously by all.

But let's come back here to Occam's Razor. Here is how Wikipedia sums it up: "When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question". In practical terms for the 9/11 Truth movement this translates into a fundamental principle: we do not need to refer to whatever happened at the Pentagon to prove that 9/11 was in inside job.

The official narrative (it does not even deserve to be called a "theory") so full of holes that even a fully empowered independent investigation would have a very hard time making sense of it all. There are literally dozens of issues which should be investigated: the damage to the Pentagon, of course, but also the real fate of United 93 (was it shot down?), the impossible phone calls made from the aircraft, the lack of debris in Shanksville, the close connections of the supposed hijackers to the CIA and FBI, the role of "high-fiving" Israelis and the so-called "Israeli students" spy network, the financing of the alleged hijackers by the Pakistani ISI (whose head was in DC on 9/11), etc. These are all valid topics worthy of careful analysis, but they are not needed to establish that 9/11 was in inside job.

The big news of 2009 was the publication by a group of prestigious scientists in the Open Chemical Physics Journal of a of a peer-reviewed article entitled "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" which established that the dust from the WTC buildings which was collected in NY is full of not only of residue of explosives, but even from unexploded materials (see also Jim Hoffman's paper"Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust"). Not only had a "smoking gun" been found, a "loaded gun" had been found too. This was, of course, terrific news for the 9/11 Truth movement, a monumental achievement for the scientists involved in the research and publication of this seminal paper. But establishing that explosives have now been found is not needed to make the case that 9/11 was in inside job.

Why is this so important? Because any discussion about HOW 9/11 was done can turn into a refutation of WHAT was done that day. For example, the explosives expert Ron Craig has regularly attacked Richard Cage with the following fallacy: since he - Ron Craig - would not have been able to bring down the WTC buildings with regular explosives without a number of phenomena which were not observed on 9/11 and since he - Ron Craig - knows of no other explosives which could have brought these buildings down the way they were seen to collapse, it follow therefore that explosives could not have been used and the cause of the collapse itself and all the phenomena seen and heard that day could only have been a gravity induced collapse. Ron Craig is basically saying this: "since I cannot explain it - it did not happen".

So here is what is so crucial: the 9/11 Truth movement should never accept to be placed in the position of having to explain what kind of explosives were used, how they were placed, how they were detonated, how they were brought into the buildings, or how they were manufactured. Our position should be crystal clear: we know that the buildings were brought down with explosives, we think that we have some solid evidence about at least some of explosives which were used, we even have a very good idea of how they might have been brought in, but none of that is central to our thesis: that 9/11 was in inside job. What the 9/11 Truth movement needs to reply to the Ron Craigs out there is: we have proven that the buildings were brought down with explosives and since you claim to be an explosives expert we don't you find out how exactly this was done instead of denying the facts?!

The main point is this: the way those who are still 9/11 "agnostics" must focus their internal debate about what happened on 9/11 is exactly the same as those who have joined the ranks of the "truthers" must focus the debate when talking to sceptics: First, only stick to those few but crucial facts which are sufficient to prove that the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives as demonstrating this is enough to prove the fundamental thesis of the entire 9/11 Truth movement that 9/11 was an 'inside job". Second - refer all other outstanding issues to a future independent 9/11 investigation. This way, we can transform each challenging question thrown at us into yet another reason for a new investigation.

This pretty much sums up the conclusions to which I have come. I am open to other opinions and to criticisms, and I am not in any way claiming that what I wrote above is THE truth about 9/11. It is simply an outline of where I am at this moment in time. My goal in posting all this is to "compare notes" with others in a similar situation and to encourage the doubting agnostics to take a second, hard, look at the facts. Lastly, my hope is that some newcomers (such as myself) might steer clear of some of the logical traps and pitfalls which are placed ahead of them by the proponents of the official narrative.

The Saker

Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was executed by the FBI

Democracy Now reports:

In Michigan, explosive details have emerged from the long-awaited release of the autopsy report for a Detroit-area Muslim imam slain by the FBI in October. The imam, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, headed a Sunni Muslim group called the Ummah. He was shot dead during an FBI raid shortly after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. Local Muslim leaders have questioned if authorities are trying to cover up facts surrounding his death.

The autopsy report was finally released Monday after a lengthy delay. It shows Abdullah died from twenty-one gunshot wounds and was found with his wrists handcuffed behind his back. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers is expected to join a coalition of civil rights and Muslim groups today to call for a Justice Department probe.

The kidnapping of Haiti

by John Pilger for The New Statesman

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured "formal approval" from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to "secure" roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a US naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now a US military base and relief flights have been rerouted to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US air force dropped bottled water to people suffering dehydration.

A very American coup

The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter despatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilating as he brayed about the "violence" and need for "security". In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens' groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even a US general's assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that "looting is the only industry" and "the dignity of Haiti's past is long forgotten".

Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. "There's no doubt," reported Frei in the aftermath of America's bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, "that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East . . . is now increasingly tied up with military power."

In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W Bush's policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700bn. He has become, in effect, the spokes­man for a military coup.

For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed Bush to the "relief effort": a parody lifted from Graham Greene's The Comedians, set in Papa Doc's Haiti. Bush's relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans's black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him to Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti's sweatshops.

When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing binding machines at the Superior baseball plant in Port-au-Prince. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pyjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the town and jerry-built housing. Year after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their speciality from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN's man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as "Mr Nice Guy . . . bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land", Clinton is Haiti's most notorious privateer, demanding deregulation that benefits the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed "tourist playground".

Not for tourists is the US building its fifth-biggest embassy. Oil was found in Haiti's waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington's "rollback" plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela's abundant petroleum reserves, and sabotage of the growing regional co-operation long denied by US-sponsored regimes.

Obama's next war?

The first rollback success came last year with the coup against the Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya, who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama's secret support for the illegal regime in Honduras carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the Americans seven military bases to "combat anti-US governments in the region".

Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama's next war. In December, researchers at the University of the West of England published first findings of a ten-year study of BBC reporting on Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of Hugo Chávez's government, while the majority denigrated his extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler.

Such distortion and servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support.

Your Disappointment In Obama Is Your Teaching Moment

By Carolyn Baker for Information Clearing House

It's the end of the affair, and the stale taste of limerence stays on your tongue. You were promised the sun, moon, and stars, and you desperately wanted to believe it was real, especially after the betrayal of your former relationship of eight years. You had considered escaping-riding off into the sunset to another country where he couldn't find you, or so you hoped. You feared for your children and what he was setting them up for. You feared for yourself in the face of his brutality and intrusiveness into your life. Though you wouldn't admit it, you secretly prayed for assassination or some elaborate exposure that would take him down.

Then along came Mr. Wonderful with his irresistible smile and infectious inspiration. He wooed you with his charm, that smile, and his engaging discourse-so articulate by comparison with the unintelligible babbling you had put up with for eight years. He cared about you and your children. No longer were you alone; like Martin Luther King, he had a dream-a dream congruent with yours, and the passion you both shared for the dream was hypnotic and felt deeply spiritual. You actually thought that he was a messenger sent from another world to rescue you and take you out of the nightmare. He used transcendent terms like "hope", "change", "yes we can." And not only were you totally surrendered to his embrace, but you begged everyone else to do the same. He's our only hope, you told them and yourself. You could scarcely contain your ecstasy when they all chose him in the last hours of the eight years you had all excruciatingly endured.

It was a new day, one year ago at this time. Your sighs of relief could not have been longer or deeper. You and your children were now safe at last.

But today, you ponder reflectively the past year, and what you have now come to understand is that the hero you married is a prisoner. You believed him when he told you he was free and at liberty to make the changes he proclaimed. You trusted him, committed yourself to him, and fought for him. And now you discover that he's betrayed you and that his actions really aren't that divergent from his predecessor's. In fact, he is a prisoner of the same forces that terrorized you for the previous eight years. Fooled again. Betrayed. You sink into despair and depression. You talk to your friends-the others who also believed in him. You feel those old and familiar emotions you felt from 2001-2008 that you thought you'd never have to feel again. "What can we do?" you ask. "What are our options?"

The affair is over, and you don't know whether to cry, rage, get drunk, stay stoned, or rethink leaving the country. You've married a prisoner; you've made another bad choice. You feel bitter and perhaps a little self-loathing. In fact, you want to take a shower because you feel dirty all over.

OK, I could be talking about a real love affair here between two people-one a professional con artist and the other, an enabler. Or I could be talking about a nation of hopeful citizens who wanted to believe so desperately that their new hero would reverse the course set forth by the sociopaths of the previous administration and lead them forward to a better, more humane life, a more bonded community, a saner world for themselves and their children.

What we all must ask ourselves at the end of a relationship that turned out badly-a relationship at the end of which we felt betrayed and disappointed is quite simply: What is my part? Why did I make this choice? What did I not wish to see? What were the red flags I chose to ignore?

This week, Michael Moore was interviewed by Democracy Now and confessed his sense of betrayal and disappointment with Obama's first year. What I heard from him and hear from almost every progressive liberal who expresses similar sentiments is a jaw-dropping naïveté regarding the nomination of candidate Obama and the system he represents. It is the epitome of the definition of insanity: repeating a behavior proven erroneous without exception, time after time, yet expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

Yet both sadly and fortunately, as is true whenever the betrayer shows his true colors, this is a teaching moment for the enablers. And this particular teaching moment is more important, more momentous than any in our national history. Why? Because of what is at stake in terms of the future of the planet, and that future is inextricably connected with a paradigm to which we have been "married" as a people since the birth of our nation.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on campaign financing by corporations was truly the last nail in the coffin of democracy and sealed the fundamental definition of fascism attributed to Mussolini which was simply, "the corporate state." Abramoff rules, and politicians no longer have any reason to function other than corporate whores. As a friend suggested to me a few days ago, members of Congress should now dress themselves in NASCAR uniforms indicating which corporations own them so that we don't need to bother researching the facts but can see them wearing the information on their bodies.

During the 2007-2008 hyperventilating euphoria of progressives regarding the candidacy of Obama, my website, Speaking Truth to Power, was exposing Obama's corporate connections and forecasting that little if anything would significantly change with his election. I was labeled Debbie Downer from Doom and Gloomville and called a conspiracy nut. And so here we are: Revelations from Matt Taibbi and others regarding Goldman Sachs as the largest contributor to Obama's election campaign, an escalation of war in Afghanistan above and beyond the proportions of Bush's war in Iraq, Obama's sanctioning of Bush's policies on torture, Obama's prone position in relation to Wall St. and his choice to surround himself with economic advisors who were directly responsible for creating economic collapse-I could continue ad nauseum. The similitude between the policies of Bush II and Obama are so glaring that last week, progressive journalist, Danny Schechter, asked, "Has Obama Become Bush II?" (I am particularly fond of the Photoshopped image attending the article-a picture worth more than a thousand words.)

In this teaching moment, those disappointed and despairing of their tryst with Obama have a golden opportunity to ask themselves what his betrayal of them reveals regarding the political and economic systems of America and the reality that no politician can even be nominated for the Presidency by the two-party monstrosity, let alone elected, unless that candidate is permanently dressed in his or her NASCAR uniform. If you do not ask this question, you will continue living out the definition of insanity with every national election because you refuse to look deeply at the fundamentals of how the corporate state functions. You will cover its rotting stench with come cloying cologne of "hope" and thereby not only enable your betrayers but waste precious time by not attending to life and death issues.

My 2006 book, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, endeavored first and foremost to leave the reader with an understanding of who owns and operates the American political system. Others have offered their brilliant analyses-Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine, Mike Ruppert in Crossing The Rubicon, and Kevin Phillips in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. Your failed love affair with Obama is now your teaching moment-a critical opportunity to research these four books above and buy out of the putrid, perfidious American political system and buy into making your local community resilient and self-sufficient.

I have long since rejected the American political system and have not voted in any national election since 2000, nor will I again in my lifetime. To do so is to buy into a system that has created what for years I have termed the Toxic Triangle of energy depletion, economic meltdown, and environmental devastation. Every drop of human energy I invest in that system is energy divested from working with my community, my neighborhood, and my loved ones to respond to the current and coming horrors that have been wrought by the three "E's": catastrophic climate chaos, multitudes of environmental refugees, impending global food shortages, the depletion of safe and clean drinking water worldwide, widespread droughts and environmental disasters, unprecedented energy depletion, environmental illnesses and pandemics, and global economic cataclysm.

Visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller, E.F. Schumacher, and Herman Daly have demonstrated that global challenges are most effectively addressed on the local level, where pragmatic responses and options can be created as an alternative to investment in the fantasy of global solutions. That is to say that in the 21st century, "global" is synonymous with "corporate" and therefore guaranteed to exacerbate rather than grapple with the daunting issues confronting the earth community.

Some individuals argue that focusing on re-localization forces us to ignore the global corporatism of an international ruling elite. My response is to ask why we must do one or the other. It is crucial in my opinion to be aware of the powers that be and their machinations, but I must also ask, what realistically, any of us can do to alter or avert their agenda? The answer is nothing; however, there is much we can do to protect ourselves and our communities from it by becoming self-sufficient and resilient.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, I was intrigued as I watched the swearing in of Obama, by the presence of one man standing behind and to the right of Obama--none other than Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. I doubt that the positioning was intentional, but for me, it was symbolic. It forces me to ask, which interests, which ruling elite families are "standing behind and to the right" of Obama? To what extent is he their creation and theirs alone? For that reason, I chose a photo of that symbolic moment to accompany this article. Take a closer look and think about it deeply. On Inauguration Day, I scoured the internet to find a photo of Rockefeller standing behind Obama during the Oath of Office because I knew its symbolism would later be appreciated by many more Americans than just me. This moment is the moment I had in mind.

Some enablers are capable of changing their behavior and making saner choices. For example, those that have a magnetic attraction to prisoners might find themselves losing interest because they have discovered the deeper meaning of freedom-the ability to create with the support of others, authentic, meaningful responses that do not seduce one into the prison system itself.

This particular affair is over. The "hopium" has worn off. It's time to choose whether you will pursue another affair with another prisoner or walk away from all forms of incarceration, theirs and yours. This is your teaching moment.

CAROLYN BAKER, Ph.D., was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. Her latest book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, is unique in its offering of emotional and spiritual tools for preparing for living in a post-industrial world. Her other books include: Coming Out From Christian Fundamentalism: Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred (2007) , U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You (2006) and The Journey of Forgiveness, (2000) She is available for speaking engagements and author events and can be contacted at carolyn (a) carolyn baker.net

Obama: war spending up - domestic spending down

DemocracyNow reports:

US to Expand Missile Defense System in Persian Gulf

In a move expected to heighten tension in the Middle East, the Obama administration is quietly expanding its land- and sea-based missile shield system in the Persian Gulf region. The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. In addition, the US is keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down missiles. The Obama White House says the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran. In addition, Washington is helping Saudi Arabia to create a 30,000-strong force to protect oil installations and other infrastructure.

Obama Seeks $44B Increase for Pentagon; $5B for Nuclear Arsenal

President Obama is unveiling a record $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 today. The budget would boost war spending while trimming domestic expenditures. Obama is seeking a $44 billion increase in the military’s budget. If approved, this will bring the Pentagon’s budget to $708 billion. The Obama administration is also asking Congress to increase spending on the US nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years. Obama is seeking the extra money despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world. The Obama administration argues that the boost in spending is needed to ensure that US warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages.