Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction

Authors: Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley

Abstract:

Reports by FEMA and NIST lay out the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. In this Letter, we wish to set a foundation for productive discussion and understanding by focusing on those areas where we find common ground with FEMA and NIST, while at the same time countering several popular myths about the WTC collapses.

Keywords: World Trade Center, 9/11, Total collapse, Pancake theory, Momentum conservation, Residues (...)

Published on the peer-reviewed Open Civil Engineering Journal.

Consider the Consequences of Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Power Plants, and Pray

by Floyd Rudmin

Never in history has it happened that nuclear power plants and nuclear enrichment facilities have been deliberately bombed. Such facilities, everywhere in the world, operate under severe safety conditions because the release of radioactive materials is deadly, immediately and also long after exposure. If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb a fully fueled nuclear power plant or nuclear fuel enrichment facilities, containment will be breached; radioactive elements will be released into the environment. There will be horrific deaths for families in the surrounding vicinity. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India.

Reactors and enrichment facilities are built of extra strong concrete, often with multiple layers of containment domes, often built underground. Bombing such facilities will require powerful explosives, earth penetrator war heads, maybe nuclear warheads. The explosions will blow the contamination high into the atmosphere. Where will it go is a question that is difficult to predict.

The nuclear fallout from bombing Iran will have a half life of 700 million years. That is a duration difficult to comprehend. Jesus Christ was preaching a mere 2 thousand years ago. In the evolution of humans, our earliest ape-like ancestors were walking upright a mere 5 million years ago. The Bush administration and its Israeli advisors are now planning to contaminate the planet for 700 million years. From the rhetoric of Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, they, too, think that is a good idea. The US media seem to applaud.

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences. The planet is not large. What goes around, comes around. Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America. Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip. (...)

Biofuels 'crime against humanity'

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity. (...)

Face scans for air passengers to begin in UK this summer

From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks.

Phil Booth of the No2Id Campaign said: "Someone is extremely optimistic. The technology is just not there. The last time I spoke to anyone in the facial recognition field they said the best systems were only operating at about a 40% success rate in a real time situation. I am flabbergasted they consider doing this at a time when there are so many measures making it difficult for passengers."

Gus Hosein, a specialist at the London School of Economics in the interplay between technology and society, said: "It's a laughable technology. US police at the SuperBowl had to turn it off within three days because it was throwing up so many false positives. The computer couldn't even recognise gender. It's not that it could wrongly match someone as a terrorist, but that it won't match them with their image. A human can make assumptions, a computer can't." (...)

Protests: Proposal to create EU-wide "troublemakers" database

- to "prevent individuals or groups who are considered to pose a potential threat to the maintenance of public law and order and/or security from travelling to the location of the event"

- and to put in place: "The necessary arrangements for a quick and efficient implementation of the potential expulsion measures"

- EU Security Handbook: "The scope of the manual is now such that it applies to the security (both from a public order point of view as well as counter-terrorism) of all major international events, be it political, sporting, social, cultural or other." (...)

Al-Qaeda Lifts Propaganda From Spoof News Website

by Paul Joseph Watson

If you thought the twilight zone insanity of the propaganda being desperately spewed forth in order to prolong the "war on terror" wasn't ludicrous enough, this week it got worse, after Ayman al-Zawahiri, or whoever is using him as their personal sock puppet, directly lifted a spoof news satire piece and incorporated it into his diatribe.

A few weeks ago popular news satire website The Onion ran a spoof video interview skit wherein an Al-Qaeda operative appears with a 9/11 conspiracy researcher to express his frustration about other parties being given credit for carrying out the terrorist attack on the WTC and the Pentagon. (...)

Crisis in Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation: Is it Genocide?

by Richard C. Cook

First of all, let’s get rid of the idea that we are seeing “impersonal market forces” at work. “Supply and demand” is not a “law”—it’s a policy. If a seller has an article in demand it’s a matter of choice whether he charges a premium when he offers it for sale. If he’s a decent, honest soul, maybe he won’t necessarily charge all the market will bear, particularly if the item is a necessity of life, such as food. Or maybe there will be a responsible public authority around that will prohibit price gouging or else subsidize the purchaser, as often happens in credit markets. Of course public spirited action like this is itself a declining commodity in a world afflicted with the kind of market fundamentalism and rampant privatization that has been the rage since the 1980s Reagan Revolution.

Second, let’s ask the question which any competent investigator should pose when starting out on the trail of a possible crime: “Who benefits?” Indeed we may be speaking of a crime on the scale of genocide if the events in question are a) avoidable; in which case the crime is one of negligent homicide; or b) planned, where we obviously have a conspiracy among the contributing parties.

Those who benefit are obviously the ones who finance agricultural operations, those who are charging monopoly prices for the commodities in demand, the various middlemen who bring the products to market after they leave the farm, and the owners or mortgagees of the land, retail space, and other assets required to conduct the production/consumption cycle.

In other words, it’s the financial elite of the world who have gained complete control of the most basic necessity of life. This includes not only the international financiers who provide capitalization, including the leveraging of trading in commodity futures up to the 97 percent level, but even organized crime groups which the U.S. Department of Justice says have penetrated world materials markets.

And is all this part of a long-term strategy by international finance to starve much of the world’s population in order to seize their land, control their natural resources, and enslave the rest who fear a similar fate? Already millions of people are losing their homes to housing inflation and foreclosure. Is actual or threatened physical starvation the next part of the scenario? (...)

Al-Qaeda accuses Iran of 9/11 lie

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US.

He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network.

In response to a question about persistent rumours in the Middle East that Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri said the rumour had begun on the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar.

"The purpose of this lie is clear - [to suggest] that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no-one else did in history, he said.

"Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it." (...)

Defend the 9/11 myth and attack Iran, all at the same time - agent Zawahiri is doing a hell of a job!...

Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

by David Barstow

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. (...)

What a shock!... Still fascinating to read.

France 24 Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (video)

Ulysse Gosset:

You have chosen to endorse Barack Obama. Why Barack Obama and why not Hillary Clinton?

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Because in my judgement, the United States confronts – and the world – a fundamental historical discontinuity. The world of the Cold War, or, earlier, the world of the struggle against totalitarianism of the Nazi, Stalinist varieties is finished. We live in a complicated, much more dynamic, much more politically awakened, world, in which the population of the world for the first time is politically active, stirring, restless, increasingly anti-Western, increasingly anti-American. And to manage that world well, one has to understand how history has changed, how the global context has changed. Hillary Clinton would be a perfectly competent President, but her view of the world, in my judgement, is quite conventional and traditional. That criticism is even more applicable to John McCain, who, in my view, is a great patriot and a great hero, but represents, essentially, the past.

I have been impressed, talking with Barack Obama and also from reading what he has been saying, by the fact that he understands that this great historical discontinuity has taken place, and that America has to redefine its place in the world; in fact, that America has to redefine itself. And I think that he symbolises that needed change and if he becomes President he can help America effectively make that change.

Ulysse Gosset:

What would be different if Barack Obama were President, and if Hillary were President? What would be the main difference between the two?

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

You know, I think that her instinct would be to think of the political implications of the possible decision. She is very much influenced by public opinion polls. She has a tendency to support what is popular. I think that his response would be much more based on a judgement derived from what I have been talking about: an understanding of what the central issue is and what is the proper course of action.

Ulysse Gosset:

One question about Vladimir Putin, in Russia. Are you preoccupied? Do you believe there might be a new Cold War or so? How do you see the evolution of Russia today?

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

I don’t think that there is going to be a new Cold War because Russia does not have the capacity to wage a Cold War. But Putin clearly has been driven by what might be called an imperial nostalgia. He regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union. He would like to recreate something like an imperial sphere of influence, within the space of the former Soviet Union. He bitterly resents the fact that Ukraine wants to be part of the West; sees itself as part of Europe; and aspires to EU membership; perhaps also to NATO membership. He resents the fact that Georgia makes possible the existence of the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline, which gives Europe – and the West more generally – access to the Caspian, and through the Caspian, to Central Asia. He would like to cut that.

But I think that Putin, who is an intelligent and an effective leader, is essentially a transitional figure. He is the last gasp of the old Soviet elite, the KGB, which was the privileged – the most privileged – elite within the Soviet Union. He is now beginning to disappear. Within ten years those around him, who also come from the KGB, will be gone and a new generation of Russians, many of them trained in Western universities, will begin to take over. And I think such a Russia will then follow the path that Ukraine has taken: begin to move to the West. And that is good for Russia; that is good for Europe.

Ultimately, my historic vision is a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok; not Europe to the Urals. But if Russia isolates itself, what De Gaulle poetically meant, as a European-Russian cooperation, could become a tragic but very literal geographic definition of a new reality. Namely, if Russia isolates itself, and doesn’t go to Europe, it might lose east of the Urals to their neighbours to the east, particularly the Chinese. (...)

Terrorism case ends in second mistrial in Miami

A U.S. judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday for six men accused of joining forces with al Qaeda to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago as part of an Islamic jihad against the United States.

The decision was a setback for U.S. prosecutors. It was the second mistrial declared by District Court Judge Joan Lenard in the case involving the men from Miami's impoverished Liberty City neighborhood.

The defendants were filmed swearing an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden's militant al Qaeda group, but their lawyers argued that they were only playing along in the hope of getting money out of a man claiming to have links to al Qaeda but who was actually an FBI informant. (...)

IMF head gives food price warning

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising.

"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he told reporters.

He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, "so it is not only a humanitarian question".

Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by increased demand, poor weather in some countries and an increase in the use of land to grow crops for transport fuels. (...)

A Geostrategy for Eurasia

by Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997)

(...)

If you want to understand "Geopolitics" or "Imperialism", read this 1997 Foreign Affairs article by the man behind the Obama candidacy.

Risky Geopolitical Game: Washington Plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China

by F. William Engdahl

Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing’s by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relations and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months. It also includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bringing US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves. It includes counter moves across mineral-rich Africa. And it includes strenuous efforts to turn India into a major new US forward base on the Asian sub-continent to be deployed against China, though evidence to date suggests the Indian government is being very cautious not to upset Chinese relations.

The current Tibet operation apparently got the green light in October last year when George Bush agreed to meet the Dalai Lama for the first time publicly in Washington. The President of the United States is not unaware of the high stakes of such an insult to Beijing. Bush deepened the affront to America’s largest trading partner, China, by agreeing to attend as the US Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.

The immediate expressions of support for the crimson monks of Tibet from George Bush, Condi Rice, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel most recently took on dimensions of the absurd. Ms Merkel announced she would boycott attending the August Beijing Summer Olympics as her protest at the Beijing treatment of the Tibetan monks. What her press secretary omitted is that she had not even planned to go in the first place.

She was followed by an announcement that Poland’s Prime Minister, the pro-Washington Donald Tusk, would also stay away, along with pro-US Czech President Vaclav Klaus. It is unclear whether they also hadn’t planned to go in the first place but it made for dramatic press headlines.

The recent wave of violent protests and documented attacks by Tibetan monks against Han Chinese residents began on March 10 when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for celebrating the award of the US Congress’ Gold Medal last October. The monks were joined by other monks marching to protest Beijing rule on the 49^th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.

The geopolitical game

As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.

The background actors in the Tibet “Crimson revolution” actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal”, Tibetan independence.

Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”

President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

Dalai Lama’s odd friends

In the West the image of the Dalai Lama has been so much promoted that in many circles he is deemed almost a God. While the spiritual life of the Dalai Lama is not our focus, it is relevant to note briefly the circles he has chosen to travel in most of his life.

The Dalai Lama travels in what can only be called rather conservative political circles. What is generally forgotten today is that during the 1930’s the Nazis including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and other top Nazi Party leaders regarded Tibet as the holy site of the survivors of the lost Atlantis, and the origin of the “Nordic pure race.”

When he was 11 and already designated Dalai Lama, he was befriended by Heinrich Harrer, a Nazi Party member and officer of Heinrich Himmler’s feared SS. Far from the innocent image of him in the popular Hollywood film with Brad Pitt, Harrer was an elite SS member at the time he met the 11 year old Dalai Lama and became his tutor in “the world outside Tibet.” While only the Dalai Lama knows the contents of Harrer’s private lessons, the two remained friends until Harrer died a ripe 93 in 2006.

That sole friendship, of course, does not define a person’s character, but it is interesting in the context of later friends. In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, and former Beijing Ambassador, CIA Director and President, George H.W. Bush, the Dalai Lama demanded the British government release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Dalai Lama had close ties to Miguel Serrano, head of Chile’s National Socialist Party, a proponent of something called esoteric Hitlerism.

Leaving aside at this point the claim of the Dalai Lama to divinity, what is indisputable is that he has been surrounded and financed in significant part, since his flight into Indian exile in 1959, by various US and Western intelligence services and their gaggle of NGOs. It is the agenda of the Washington friends of the Dalai Lama that is relevant here. (...)

Required reading.

Is the CIA behind the China-bashing Olympics protests?

by Larry Chin

Around the world, Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games has become the target of unprecedented, well-orchestrated and extremely hostile mass protests.

Meanwhile, geostrategic realities, and historical and current parapolitical fact, suggest that the protesters and passionate activists (in time-honored form) have once again become the willing dupes, propaganda shills, and street bullies for “causes” created, fronted, and pushed by Anglo-American intelligence agencies (CIA, British intelligence, etc.) that continue to target a government (this time Beijing), in a host of long-term subversion and sabotage plans. (...)

China Outraged by US-Tibet Resolution

An indignant China said Friday the U.S. "seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" when Congress passed a resolution calling on Beijing to stop cracking down on Tibetan dissent and talk to the Dalai Lama. (...)

McCain seems confused about al Qaeda again, suggests it’s a ’sect of Shi’ites.’

During today’s hearing with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) questioned Petraeus on what he called “the major threat” of al Qaeda in Iraq. Coming on the heels of his recent confusion over the nature of al Qaeda, McCain today seemed to refer to al Qaeda as a “sect of Shi’ites”. (...)

The coming food catastrophe

by Gwynne Dyer

Last year, it became clear that the era of cheap food was over: food costs worldwide rose by 23 percent between 2006 and 2007. This year, what is becoming clear is the impact of this change on ordinary people‚s lives.

For consumers in Japan, France, or the United States, the relentless price rises for food are an unwelcome extra pressure on an already stretched household budget. For less fortunate people in other places, they can mean less protein in the diet or choosing between feeding the kids breakfast and paying their school fees, or even, in the poorest communities, starvation. And the crisis is only getting started. (...)

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies. (...)

Former Governor Jesse Ventura: WTC Collapse A Controlled Demolition

by Paul Joseph Watson

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura vehemently savaged the official 9/11 story on a syndicated national radio show today, saying the WTC collapsed like a controlled demolition and was pulverized to dust as he also highlighted the impossible 10 second free fall speed of the towers.

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, Ventura said that his initial reaction to 9/11 was much like most people at the time, and he accepted the official story outright, a response he now regrets because he was in a position of power and could have used it to raise a lot of pointed questions. (...)