Who benefits? This was the result of the Boston bombing: a martial law precedent.

By Craig McKee                       

Remember the notes that accompanied the anthrax deliveries right after 9/11? They said things like, “Allah is great!” “Death to Israel,” “Death to America!” and “9-11-01: This is next.”

In other words, THE MUSLIMS DID IT: the same ones who had so handily defeated the world’s greatest military machine on Sept. 11, 2001. And they did it because they hate us and our freedoms … the usual. They apparently really wanted to rub salt in the wounds of a traumatized America after the largest supposed terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. And it worked; people were suitably freaked out.

The problem was that the Muslims didn’t carry out the anthrax attacks, which was later proven by the fact that the anthrax was highly weaponized and was manufactured at a U.S. military facility. The whole thing was later pinned on American scientist Bruce Edward Ivins after he had allegedly committed suicide. We also learned that Bush, Cheney and other key administration officials were put on the anthrax-preventing antibiotic Cipro in early September 2001, long before the anthrax attacks happened.

Funny they thought of that precaution but didn’t think of evacuating the Pentagon when a plane was supposedly heading right for it on 9/11.

So Muslims didn’t do the anthrax, just as the evidence clearly shows they didn’t do 9/11.

Now we have an oh-so-convenient “confession” by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to handily explain his motives for the Boston Marathon bombing. Apparently, Dzhokhar wrote a kind of claim of responsibility on the inside of the boat where he was hiding, using a marker he “found” (no paper was handy, so he wrote it on the cabin wall as he bled from multiple gunshot wounds).

The note has all the key Muslims-are-to-blame talking points. Here are some of the things, paraphrased, that Dzhokhar is supposed to have written:

• When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims
• We’re getting you back for killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan
• The innocent victims in Boston are collateral damage just as Muslims are in U.S. wars
• I don’t mourn my brother because he is a martyr in paradise, where I expect to be soon. (How did he know for sure his brother was dead?)

We learned of this note in a CBS News report on May 16 during which Charlie Rose and his grinning sidekick Norah O’Donnell speak with “senior correspondent” John Miller, a former FBI assistant director. This CBS “scoop” came a full month after the bombing because, Miller suggests, the note was “…the thing that investigators never found anywhere else.”

Ahh … let me get this straight. They didn’t examine the boat where Dzhokhar spent his last several hours of freedom for possible evidence at the time? Really? And when they did, they magically came up with the familiar “death to America” justification that so often accompanies these false flag events.

The ironic ending to the report comes when O’Donnell mentions that the note itself ended up being riddled with hundreds of bullet holes, which Miller confirms, saying: “The note has those holes in it.”

No kidding.

Here are the four major elements of this false flag event and how the official story fails to hold up in each case:

The exercise

The most obvious sign that Boston was a false flag operation is the bomb “exercise” that was going on at the exact same location and time as the actual bombing. This has become a tell-tale sign of false flags, particularly since 9/11 when numerous exercises were taking place that morning that simulated the very thing that happened.

The most absurd example is the 7/7 London bombings when a simulation of the bombing of three underground stations was going on as those same stations were actually being bombed (not to mention a real bus bomb that was also reflected in the exercise).

The pattern was repeated with the mass shooting in Norway in 2011, the Aurora movie theater shooting in July 2012, and the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012.

In Boston on April 15, loudspeakers announced to the crowd near the finish line of the Marathon that they needn’t worry about the bomb squad and their bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling the area during the race because it was just an exercise.

Then there were the “contractors” wearing black jackets and caps, beige pants, and black backpacks. It has been alleged that they were from the private, CIA-linked security firm Craft International. Their presence in Boston has been denied but the photographic evidence confirms that they were there.

The carnage

There are so many questions and anomalies concerning the actual destruction and death that we’ve been told came from the bombing. I do, however, want to make it clear at this point that I am not saying no bombs went off or that no one was really hurt. The event may well have been a combination of real victims and fake ones. It also seems to have involved a wild exaggeration of the number of injured. We’re told there were as many as 264 people were hurt but the photo evidence does not support this.

We’ve also been presented with an obviously fake story of “heroism” as Carlos Arredondo wheeled Jeff Bauman, the man who supposedly had his legs blown off, down the street past photographers. It is actually the Bauman part of the story that makes it most clear that the whole event was not what it was made out to be. This topic was addressed in detail in the last Truth and Shadows post, written by Sheila Casey.

First, I do not believe the image that has been burned into everyone’s mind – of Bauman being pushed down the street in wheelchair – came about by accident. It too perfectly achieved all that the real perpetrators could have wished for: a human face on the horror and a hero who would overcome all odds to triumph over evil.

I find it impossible to believe that a man who had his legs blown off would be left lying on the ground for several minutes while others with seemingly minor injuries were attended to. There were gurneys and ambulances, but not for Jeff. He was just left there.

Arrendondo supposedly came to the rescue (he claims to have rushed to Jeff’s aid although video clearly shows he was more preoccupied with wrestling with the fence than with helping anyone). So much of Arredondo’s story is proven false by the photos and video. He says Bauman’s shirt was on fire, but there’s no evidence of this. He also says all the flags were blown over by the blast: not true. And the bloody American flag he unfurled for cameras? Yes, we get the symbolism.

And then there is the blood. At no time do we see any blood coming from Bauman’s legs even when they were draped over the shoulders of a woman who was wearing a white top. This woman was later transported in an ambulance while Bauman was apparently left behind. When she was wheeled away, there was plenty of blood on her. But where did it come from? And the blood on the sidewalk (as shown in some of the photos, anyway) is a bright red color that looks a lot more like paint than blood.

We have the mysterious hooded man (who has been identified as Christian Williams) who appeared to be working on Bauman’s lower body in some way. Was he coming to his medical aid or was he affixing some kind of prosthetic? This same man was later attended to by medical personnel as he lay on the ground. Shortly before that, he’d been propped up on his elbow, looking quite casual and not very badly hurt (no, there’s no proof he wasn’t hurt). According to the New York Times, however, Williams has had four operations on his legs since the event. He and his friend, Caroline Reinsch, have a fundraising web page and has received more than $100,000 so far. Jeff Baumans’ page has raised more than $760,000.

There is also the comical photo of a victim walking down the street whose clothes had all sorts of slices in them, while he didn’t appear to be injured.

The pursuit

Nothing about the identification and pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers passes the smell test. We learned early on that these two had been identified as prime suspects, in part because legless victim Bauman identified one of the brothers as having set a backpack on the ground just before the blast.

Initially, the FBI released surveillance video of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar with a plea for help in identifying them. Later we found that the brothers – and particularly older brother Tamerlan – were well known to the FBI. So they appeared to be lying about not knowing who these two were.

Fact is, most people are convinced the brothers are guilty because of how they allegedly reacted violently when they were pursued. (“If they are innocent, why did they shoot it out with the cops?” is how it goes.) But how much of that story stands up – or makes sense? The story of the shootout involving police and Dzhokhar – who was hiding in a boat – turns out to be a lie.

We were told by police commissioner Ed Davis that there was an exchange of gunfire between Dzhokhar and police that led to his capture. At the end of the shootout, the story goes, Dzhokhar may have shot himself in the throat on purpose (huh?). Later, a police spokesman said the throat wound looked more like a knife wound than a bullet wound.

Now we know he was unarmed and that police riddled the boat with bullets unilaterally. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/boston-bombing-suspect-unarmed_n_3150723.html)

Oh yes, and the owner of the boat is quoted as saying he looked into the boat and saw a pool of blood. But photographs taken the next day show only a small amount of blood where Dzhokhar would have climbed out (and it’s highly unlikely that the police would have cleaned up the blood by the next day – especially when we can plainly see a small amount blood on the outside of the boat).

We’re told that Dzhokhar drove over Tamerlan’s body while escaping after shooting and hurling explosives at police. But did Tamelan really die in the shootout or after being run over? A video surfaced that showed a man looking awfully like Tamerlan, handcuffed and naked, being placed in a police car. Dan Dicks of Press for Truth reports that he spoke to the brothers’ aunt, Maret Tsarnaeva, who said that the man in the video was absolutely 100% her nephew.

If true, this means that Tamerlan was murdered while in police custody.

And think about this: the brothers are cornered by police after a massive manhunt, and one, Dzhokhar, is allowed to escape in a car? He ditches the vehicle and then runs away? Boy, it’s darned lucky we had the whole martial law thing going. Regular cop tactics just weren’t enough with these masterminds.

Alleging that Dzhokhar drove over his brother did make him seem less human, but is it at all believable? We later heard from an eyewitness that it was police who drove over Tamerlan’s body. And, according to Infowars.com, the brothers may have been trying to surrender to police. And, for some bizarre reason, the brothers stood in the light of the headlights of their car as they exchanged fire with police. We were told they had a veritable arsenal of weapons, including explosives, but then later that turned into one gun between the two of them.

In fact, authorities say the brothers killed MIT cop Sean Collier because they were short one gun. That’s right, they shot him in the head because they needed his gun. This was their escape plan. If all this is true, then these guys really must have wanted to get caught. So far, we haven’t been given any hard evidence at all to support the accusation that the cop was killed by one of the brothers. (http://news.yahoo.com/final-shootout-then-boston-bombing-suspect-caught-112744657.html)

It reminds me of the murder of Officer J.D. Tippitt in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. That was pinned on Lee Harvey Oswald even though eyewitnesses said two men got out of a car, shot Tippitt, and then drove away (for more on this, check out Mark Lane’s recent book, The Last Word). In the public mind, the extra murder solidifies the public’s belief in the guilt of the suspects.

The Tsarnaev brothers are supposed to have committed a carjacking after shooting Collier, and they even told the driver they had done the bombing. The alleged victim told police that the brothers only let him live because he wasn’t American. And while he didn’t understand what they were saying, he heard them say “Manhattan” several times. How convenient is that? How convenient is all this evidence.

Oh yeah, the carjacking victim escaped while the brothers were getting “snacks” at a gas station. I guess we just have to take his word for that.

We were told the brothers had shot Transit Police Officer Richard Donohue during their shootout with police. But it was later admitted that Donohue had been killed by police “friendly fire.” We were also told the brothers had robbed a convenience store. Then we were told they didn’t do that either. (http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/04/19/tsarnaev-brothers-didnt-rob-a-7-eleven-spokesperson/)

The connections

So it turns out that the brothers were well known to U.S. intelligence, including the FBI, which interviewed Tamerlan in 2011. The boys’ mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, says the FBI had been watching their family for years and had even been in their home, telling her that her eldest son, Tamerlan, was a dangerous extremist. She was quoted in minds.com as saying:

“He was controlled by the FBI, like for three, five years,” she said. ”They knew what my son was doing, they knew what actions and what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to come…and talk to me…they were telling me that he was really a serious leader and they were afraid of him.”

Both of the brothers’ parents claim their sons are being set up, with their mother saying the FBI had been in touch with Tamerlan for years. In an article in Global Research, Bill Van Auken makes this telling statement:

“While much remains murky about these and other issues, one thing is clear: the Boston bombing, like virtually every other major terrorist incident, real or invented, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, was carried out by someone who was known to and under surveillance by US intelligence agencies.”

And perhaps most significant are the connections between the brothers, their uncle, Ruslan Tsarni (who called them “losers” on TV even though he hadn’t seen either of them in several years), and the CIA. Tsarni, it has come out, was married to the daughter of a senior CIA official, Graham Fuller. He even lived at Fuller’s home.

In another Global Research article, F. William Engdahl writes:

“Is it mere “coincidence” that the uncle of the two young men accused of the Boston bombings was related in marriage to the CIA figure who advocated using the networks which were later named “Al Qaeda” across Central Asia including Chechnya where the Tsarnaev brothers had roots?”

How I learned to stop worrying and love martial law

There are a number of clues that make clear that this was a story contrived to play on our emotions. We can start by looking at the results: this theatrical event creates a contrived coming together of the population “in the face of tragedy.” Boston Strong? Who thought up that bit of branding?  anyone? This makes me thing of Wag the Dog and the “Good Old Shoe” song that was written, recorded, and placed in the Library of Congress as if it had been there for decades. The Boston slogan, and the song, were clearly intended to create some of that artificial warmth.

People come together to celebrate their strength and resilience based upon a lie. (As Sheila  Casey said to me, the tragedy of it creates a kind of “feel-good” bonding situation that people don’t want interfered with). Hence the anger expressed when anyone challenges the story (“How dare you disrespect the victims by questioning the facts?”)

The pattern from Sandy Hook is repeated: media reporting misinformation that they should not have until they knew it was right. These are just too blatant to be honest mistakes. Either the younger brother drove over his brother or he didn’t. Either there was a pool of blood in the boat or there wasn’t. Why do we keep getting dozens of unconfirmed facts from unnamed sources that turn out to be false? In my experience of reporting on crime stories, police do not throw out “rumours” or guesses about things for public consumption.

The news media, of course, pour flames on the emotional fire while keeping us distracted from clear facts that show that we’re cheering as much for a script as for a triumph over real adversity.

Because the whole event is swept up in a wave of emotion, anyone who questions the facts is seen as an intruder in the “overcoming-tragedy” presentation. We are told that we are disrespecting the victims, that we should leave the “conspiracy crap” for a later time (or cut it out altogether). What an effective way to marginalize anyone who dares to question the story or use their brain in any way.

And the point of all this?

Martial law is imposed where people are forced to stay in their homes, businesses are forced to close, and an army of police (who look just like soldiers) go door to door searching houses and forcing inhabitants out at gunpoint with their hands up. Only a well-planned psyop could turn this into a patriotic event instead of the ominous precedent that it was.

And now that we’ve been introduced to the reality of martial law – and we seemed to like it –  we’re likely to be seeing it again very soon.

Everyone ignores the man who just lost his legs.

 “Does a compelling description of a terrorist attack, replete with ‘eyewitness accounts’ of the terrifying scene, and official pronouncements, constitute an actual event?” – Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy.

 By Sheila Casey (Special to Truth and Shadows)

The mainstream media story of the Boston Marathon bombing is of Chechen terrorists who unleashed weapons of mass destruction, killing four and wounding 264 in an unthinkable scene of “bodies flying into the street”, “so many people without legs” and “blood everywhere.”

A massive police response followed, with 9,000 federal, state, FBI and Department of Homeland Security troops conducting door-to-door searches to find and subdue the “armed and extremely dangerous” suspects. Cops unceremoniously ousted residents from their homes to set up impromptu battle stations, and one aimed a gun at a resident who was snapping his picture from a window.

For the vast majority of the American population, this is the truth and they feel no need to look further. Yet those who are willing to question the narrative we’ve been sold and take a hard look behind the curtain may be in for a surprise. Based on the video and photo record, it seems clear that the lead actor in this production—the most grievously wounded, as well as the man who fingered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the bomber—was faking his injuries, as were most of those allegedly hurt by the first bomb.  We were told his name is Jeff Bauman, but since that can’t be verified and his survival is unbelievable to the point of being miraculous, we’ll simply call him Miracle Man.

First let’s see what can be learned from a Boston Globe video on YouTube that starts six seconds prior to the first explosion.  (For this article, I’m focusing solely on the first explosion and its now famous victim, although serious anomalies–such as the curious case of a missing mailbox– have also been reported at the site of the second explosion.)

The cameraman was standing on the finish line, facing the approaching runners, so had a view of both explosions. For 2 min and 42 seconds, he continues filming, as he walks around the area of the first explosion pointing the camera in seemingly random directions.

There is a boom and white smoke rises from the sidewalk. But nothing flies into the street: no debris, no nails or pellets, and certainly no bodies or body parts. None of the flags are knocked down or pierced by shrapnel. Watching this video, it’s easy to understand why some participants believed the explosions to be part of the finish line festivities. All runners except one keep on going: although not hit by anything, an older man falls and rolls on his back, but within 30 seconds he’s on his feet and walking to the finish line.

The second explosion seems similar in intensity to the first, although we don’t see it as clearly.

At 0:53, we get our first good look at the sidewalk behind the fence, in front of Sugar Heaven: there are about seven people there, all standing, and some litter. No blood, no one on the ground. We saw no crowds of people rushing from that area, and usually the finish line of a major race is jammed with spectators. Where did everyone go? Was the area cleared ahead of time?

At 1:17 we get a view of the sidewalk in front of the store next door, Marathon Place, ground zero for the first bomb. We see about five victims on the ground, and perhaps six assisting them. (They may be more, our view is blocked by a fence.)

At 1:53 we see that Carlos Arredondo—who achieved brief fame for rescuing the double amputee, Miracle Man—is still clutching his American flag, even as he tries to get over the fence to help the victims. This is peculiar: who holds onto something unimportant in the face of a mass disaster?

From 2:17 to 2:23 we see an older balding man dressed all in black, gesturing to people off screen to the right to come to him. I say “people,” plural, because he makes the “come to me” gesture continuously for the six seconds we see him, as if bringing in a crowd. He has a lanyard around his neck of the type used by large corporations for employee identification.

Indeed, by 2:35, as the fence is finally pulled away, the sidewalk is much more crowded than it was a minute ago. We also see that Carlos still has not reached Miracle Man.

Although we hear sirens several times, in this video we never see an ambulance or any bodies—living or dead—being carried away. Perhaps all the ambulances went to the second bombing, where people may have really been hurt. At this point the camera aims down at the street and fades out.

The video gives the impression of a bomb much, much smaller than media reports would lead one to believe. The area is swarming with runners, photographers, police and EMTs, but actual victims seem scarce.

Almost seven minutes after the explosion, Bauman is sitting up and not bleeding.

The uncropped photo of the poster boy for this event, who allegedly lost both legs in the first blast, raises several questions. He is in the finisher’s chute, about 40 yards from the finish line.

Where are they taking him? Why aren’t he and his severed limbs being rushed to the hospital? He reportedly ends up at Boston Medical Center, 1.5 miles away. Are they planning to get him there via wheelchair?

Why is there so little blood? We can clearly see the road behind them, and there is no blood trail. The one visible tourniquet on his leg is not tight to his skin, so it cannot be properly tied or winched. A second tourniquet is caught under the wheels.

According to this article in Wikipedia, it is possible to bleed to death from a severed femoral artery in as little as three minutes. Although the femoral artery ends above the knee, there is still huge blood flow below the knee, and Miracle Man lost both legs simultaneously just below the knee.  The blood should be gushing from his legs, especially because he is sitting up. Standard protocol for a traumatic amputation of the leg is to lay the patient flat and elevate the leg, using gravity to prevent uncontrolled hemorrhage. We know from other photos that a woman near Miracle Man (she is seen literally on top of him) with no visible injuries was put on a stretcher before Miracle Man. Why did she get the stretcher and not him?

How is he still conscious? Based on real time video evidence , this picture was taken more than six and a half minutes after his calves were blown off. He is not bleeding, he is sitting up with eyes open, and he is still a long way from getting medical attention. How did he survive?

Malarchuk almost died when his jugular vein was sliced by a skate.

By comparison, consider this video of a hockey accident where goalie Clint Marlachuk got a skate across his neck that cut his jugular vein.  Just a few seconds after the cut, he’s already created a sizable pool of blood on the ice. It is easy to believe that if his bleeding had continued unchecked for a minute or two, he would be dead or close to it.

A swimmer was attacked by a great white shark off Solana Beach, CA with a bite across both legs. Although his fellow triathletes brought him immediately to shore, he died within minutes of the bite—possibly before being pulled from the water. Unlike Miracle Man, the swimmer’s legs were not completely detached.

(Frame 1) The bomb has just gone off but there is no blood.

So what are we to make of these images of Miracle Man immediately after the bombing, taken from a surveillance video? In frame 1 below, the smoke is still thick so the bomb has just detonated. But far from being splayed out on the concrete in a pool of blood, clothes tattered and/or singed from the heat, struggling to comprehend what has just happened, and with multiple smaller injuries in addition to those that took off his legs, we see an odd scene.

Miracle Man is on his back in the “crunch” position often seen in gyms by those trying to tighten their abdominals. It’s not an easy or comfortable position to hold, and certainly not the one I’d choose immediately after suffering a devastating injury like double traumatic amputation. We see no blood, injuries or torn clothing on him or anyone else in the photo. Miracle Man’s thighs, hands and elbows are in the air and a hooded man is between his stumps, in the posture of a midwife. And between the two men is an African-American woman, who appears to be leaning or resting on Miracle Man’s abdomen.

(Frame 2) Amidst the “carnage,” the hooded man takes a moment to don his sunglasses.

In frame 2, the hooded man is putting on his sunglasses. If he truly had before him a mortally wounded man who could expire within minutes, stopping to put on his sunglasses would seem strange. For that matter, wearing a hood on a nice day with temperatures in the high 50s/low 60s is also strange—it’s no fashion statement.

But because we know that this is a faked scene, he is most likely donning the glasses to try to hide his identity. Between the hoodie and the sunglasses it works pretty well.

The black woman is still reclining on Miracle Man, who still has his hands, arms and thighs in the air. Only his lower back and buttocks are touching the pavement. We still see no blood or injuries anywhere in the frame.

(Frame 3) His stump is over the woman’s head, but there is no blood.

In frame 3, the clean, dry bone of Miracle Man’s left calf is raised and is on the black woman’s head, but there is no blood. She is wearing a bright white shirt and it is wholly free of blood. The alleged double amputee is still in the crunch position, his hands now in front of his face. What is he doing? Why is no one attempting to tie a tourniquet or get him help? Why is Miracle Man himself not attending to his own life threatening injuries, as the goalie did by trying to stanch the blood gushing from his neck with his hands?

(Frame 4) At ground zero for the 1st bomb, there is no blood.

In frame 4, the bone of Miracle Man’s left leg is now directly over the black woman’s head, but still there is no blood, on his stump or on the woman. The red that we see is her jacket.

A few minutes later, we see this odd scene (photo below). Miracle Man isn’t visible, although we know he hasn’t left the area yet, because Carlos, his rescuer, is still there, leaning against the fence holding his cowboy hat and flag, as if waiting his cue. The hooded man is now reclining, propped up on one arm, looking very relaxed.

This blood looks more like red paint. Is that a bottle of fake blood in the lower right?

The shop window has been blown out, leaving a pile of broken glass on the sidewalk. The bomb was supposedly on the sidewalk, so why didn’t the glass blow in to the shop, rather than out onto the sidewalk?

Now, finally we see blood—or what could be blood if it were darker.  Below is a photo of the blood from a gruesome motorcycle accident, next to the victim’s arm.  It’s much thicker and darker than the substance on the Boston sidewalk.

In the lower right corner of the photo above is a bottle containing a liquid the same color as the “blood” now on the sidewalk.  Did the red liquid on the sidewalk come out of this bottle? The black woman now has blood on her, although not on her head and shoulders where you’d expect it after having Miracle Man’s freshly severed leg directly over her.

Will no one help the poor man who has no legs?

Real accident, real blood.

Finally, here is Miracle Man after both the black woman and the hooded man have moved away from him.  There is a discarded surgical glove on the ground, although no first responders have yet responded to the most badly injured victim.  There is clearly no tourniquet on Miracle Man’s left leg, yet no blood flow is seen. Everyone around him seems quite nonplussed by his gruesome injuries and unmoved to help him. His right stump is much shorter than the left one, ending above the knee, and appears to be entirely encased in his pants. In the photo taken later of Jeff in the wheelchair (shown above), which according to Google Images has been published over 1 million times, his right stump has magically grown a knee.

Compare the story told by these images with the complete fantasy reported in the Concord Monitor.

(Miracle Man) was lying on the ground near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, grasping the hands of his girlfriend’s two roommates. Just seconds before, they’d been waiting with a sign to hold up when she completed the race. He wanted the girls to get help before he did. He didn’t realize how bad his own injuries were. But before he knew it he was in a wheelchair, and a man in a cowboy hat was pinching one of Bauman’s severed arteries.

Carlos’ story—vaulting the fence to hurry the legless man into a wheelchair—is not borne out by the photos.

More fiction from the Concord Monitor:

When the first explosion happened, (Carlos Arredondo) jumped over a fence and ran toward the victims, he told WEEI radio in Boston. He knelt down next to Bauman, whose legs had been blown off and was (sic) bleeding profusely… Arredondo found a sweater on the ground, ripped it and tied it around Bauman’s leg to try to stop the bleeding.

We know from the surveillance video that none of this happened. There were no young women tenderly holding his hands, no man in a cowboy hat heroically vaulting the fence to put him immediately in a wheelchair, no profuse bleeding and no ripped sweater to stop it.

A photo op dreamed up by a PR firm: Carlos displays his blood soaked American flag.

It’s instructive to see the kind of story the Monitor (and other media outlets) manufactured. It’s a fairy tale, with heroes and villains. There are no shades of grey; the victim is a saint; despite being mortally wounded, “he wanted the girls to get help before he did,” and the villain is pure evil—so evil neither his wife nor mother want to claim his body.

Military propaganda gets the most bang for the buck out of creating intense emotion and a desire for vengeance in the targeted population, which in this case are the American people. By creating stories of wholesome, saintly Americans who have been brutalized by deranged foreigners, the event is reduced to a simplistic story of good against evil. Who would not support the “good” when threatened by “evil?” Thus the authorities are better able to carry out the agenda the attack was created to facilitate, such as shutting down a city under de facto martial law, or amping up racist beliefs that Muslims are not quite human, and their sufferings—such as those inflicted by the US during endless wars—nothing to be concerned about.

Adding to the unanswered questions is this video, a double-time static view of the entire scene, evidently taken from the media deck over the finish line. At 3:12 we see that as Miracle Man is being wheeled down the street, two people bringing in an empty gurney walk right past him and his entourage, going the other way. They pass within 10 feet of each other, so they could not have missed seeing each other. The man in the yellow jacket with Miracle Man has “EMT” on his lapel. Why didn’t this Emergency Medical Tech ask for the gurney, pointing out the dire condition of his patient?

It is 3:17 by the time they exit the frame at the lower left. Since this video is playing back at twice the normal speed, that means that six minutes and 34 seconds (3:17 x 2) had elapsed—just while this video was playing— before Miracle Man started on his journey down Boylston Street, where the wheelchair Bauman shot was taken. The video doesn’t show the bombing or any emergency vehicles, so it begins sometime after the bombings, although there’s no way to know how much after.

Carlos Arrendondo was interviewed about the bombing, but almost everything he says about it is provably false.

At 0:11 he says emphatically “you see people without limbs. Ripped off limbs everywhere, everywhere.” This is patently false. The only sign of a possible lost limb in the photos and video is a part of the sole of a foot and toes seen in the lower left of the frame. But there is no way to know if that foot is still attached to a person.

At 0:25 (although partly inaudible) he makes clear that he ripped either his own or Miracle Man’s clothes to make the tourniquets. Problem is, the tourniquets are bright white, and neither he nor Miracle Man were wearing white. This also contradicts the interview where he said he created a tourniquet out of a sweater, as neither he nor Miracle Man were wearing a sweater.

At 0:35 Carlos says of Miracle Man that “he had a big fire going on, on his shirt.” Miracle Man’s shirt was not at all burned.

At 1:22 he says “there was so many people begging me for help, begging me for help, but I can only help one at a time.” Despite the many photos and videos of Carlos that day, there is no sign of him interacting with any victim other than Miracle Man. At one point he is seen standing against the fence, just waiting.

At another point, with Miracle Man still untended to, Carlos is seen trying to take down a fence. Right behind him are the hooded man and the black woman who were with Miracle Man, so Miracle Man had to have been directly behind Carlos only minutes before. Where is he? I’d guess he’s off getting his makeup applied and his fake bloody prosthesis attached.  The architects of this event knew they needed a poster boy to get the public riled up, and Miracle Man was the guy for the job. His makeup and fake bloody prosthesis had to be good.

At 1:38 he says of Miracle Man “he was unconscious.” This is false, Miracle Man is conscious even in the final photo, taken nearly seven minutes after the bomb.

At 2:01 he unrolls his bloody American flag and shows it to the interviewers. If the interview was taped prior to the event, this may be why he was so determined to hang on to his flag even while trying to climb the fence to get to the victims. He would need to still have it with him, for consistency’s sake, in any other photos and videos after the event.

At 2:28 they start talking about the flags of nations that lined the street just prior to the finish line, and at 2:37 Carlos says emphatically, with a sweeping motion of his hand, “all the flags was gone. All gone.” This again is false: both videos show that not a single flag was knocked over by the blasts.

Carlos’s lies about the scale of the event could be simply a man trying to make himself out to be more of a hero than he was. But, he had to have known that there were many cameras at the finish line and his story would be proven false. In light of the other discrepancies in the story, it seems more likely that Carlos was paid, and this was the story he was told to relate.

***

I know that the evidence I’ve presented here, and the huge charade that it implies, will incite outrage and indignation among those who still believe that the media delivers the unvarnished truth. If this is your first exposure to solid evidence of false flag terrorism, your mind is probably madly sputtering with justifications and defenses that will allow you to go on believing what you have always believed: that your most loved news personality has only the truth as his/her goal. If you identify as liberal, you no doubt believe that there is propaganda aplenty at Fox News, while Amy Goodman and Rachel Maddow tell it like it is. Conservatives of course believe the opposite.

Unfortunately both sides are wrong, as there is little truth to be found on either the right or the left, whether “mainstream” or “alternative.” The false left-right paradigm keeps people fighting among themselves and ignoring the real enemy, which is exactly as the real enemy likes it.

Those looking for a quick and painless way to dismiss uncomfortable facts need look no further than any of thousands of pundits and news anchors who have already told you what to think about “conspiracy theorists.” You’ve heard that they start with a conclusion and make the evidence fit their preconceived notions, they find real life too boring so they invent elaborate stories to spice things up, or that the idea of random terror is so, well, terrifying that they need to have a “grand theory” to make the world seem safer and more manageable.

These themes originated with the CIA 47 years ago, when they released a plan to stomp out alternative views about the JFK assassination. The plan includes a recommendation to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics”

Our assets should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories.

Although lacking any grounding in fact, these criticisms of researchers who question the government’s story have been repeated so often by both mainstream and alternative sources, that they are now believed by many gullible people.

Does the idea of the US government using actors to play the role of victims in fake terror attacks seem impossibly far-fetched?

An article from 2003 describes the Department of Homeland Security running exercises with “make-believe victims seeking medical treatment. Volunteers and professional actors will play the roles of victims…”

Consider this Actor Waiver Form for a Homeland Security Exercise. Although I can’t verify its authenticity, if they are using actors in drills, such forms would be standard operating procedure.

DHS has a history of using actors for mass casualty drills.

The U.S. government uses amputees for training exercises. With a specially prepared “bloody” prosthesis, an actor who lost his limb years ago can be made to look as if he lost his limb moments ago.

Fake wounds created for “scenario training” can look like the real thing.

The government has staged many terror attacks to achieve political goals, and they no doubt learned that one of their biggest headaches after such an attack was the grieving family members who kept pointing out the inconsistencies in the stories they were given about how their loved ones had died. For the citizen mindlessly ingesting standard news pablum, the official story may seem plausible. Not so for the highly motivated mother, husband or daughter of a victim, who latches on a like a bulldog and won’t let go until they get the answers they seek.

But the perpetrators still need graphic images of human suffering to incite the kind of rage that prompts the citizenry to willingly surrender their rights and let the feds ignore the law and do as they please.

The solution was evidently to stage terror attacks with actors, where no one actually gets hurt. In the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, they were able to achieve all the same goals that a real terror attack would have (such as testing whether it is possible to close down a city over a single teenage “terrorist” on the loose) without the nuisance of grieving, inquisitive family members.

***

Sheila Casey is a journalist whose work has been published by the Chicago Sun-Times, Reuters, The Denver Post, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice and the Rock Creek Free Press. Contact her or read her other political articles here.

Darwin saw what everyone saw, but thought what nobody thought. – Author unknown¹

This is the first part in Barrie Zwicker’s 12-part series on false flags. The next installment is Maximum Illusion Time.

Everyone has seen a False Flag Operation, but few have recognized one. The classic example is 9/11, seen by millions on TV but not recognized for what it really was – a treasonous inside job.

Unlike 9/11 and the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin “attack” (that never took place) and the 1933 torching of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, by Hitler (but which he blamed on “the communists”) not all False Flags are both large and brazen. In this series I will try to give some idea of the dizzying array of forms that False Flags take: false flag events, false flag pseudo-events, false flag front organizations and false flag operators. You can barely open a newspaper without seeing the telltale markings of a False Flag – if you know what these markings are.

What all False Flags have in common is that they are deceptions, a category of phenomena too ambitious for this series. But I will argue that historically, materially and politically the False Flag is the most important and damaging type of deception.

The word deception and the concept it describes are familiar because of the fact, again known by everybody, that deceptions abound.

Equally important, if you stop to think about it, is that there’s this well-established word, deception, that names the phenomenon. It has a well-grooved place in our neural pathways. The concept and its emotive and other nuances can be instantly retrieved when we encounter an obvious deception.

In contrast, the term False Flag is not yet widely known. No well-grooved neural pathway leads to a mental storage area.

Additionally, those familiar with the term offer similar but varying definitions of what it means. (The sizable definitional issues will be addressed later in this series.).

FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS: WHY SO DEADLY?

False flag operations (we’re dropping the caps now) are the pre-eminent launching pad for wars, the usual smokescreen for assassinations, the all-purpose generator of moral panics, the stock-in-trade of the gigantic spy establishment. Black operations (almost always called “covert operations” – a term that somehow bestows acceptability) are frequently of the false flag variety. (Some black ops are just spying.)

There are explanations for the gross under-use of the term false flag operation, for this black hole in the language that helps keep hidden the reality behind it.

First is that false flag operations are planned and executed in utmost secrecy.

But that’s just the beginning. The initial secrecy fades into relative insignificance compared with the reality that false flag ops are followed up as quickly as possible by elaborate cover-ups, conceived concurrently by the same hidden operators, within the same cocoon of secrecy.

The false flag cover-up is well understood by the perpetrators to be integral to the front-end deception, just as bank robbers arrange to have their getaway car around the corner and the motor running.

But the total operation does not end with the cover-up.

Partly because it is elaborate, the cover-up constitutes a great danger for the perpetrators. Detectives will attest that many major crimes are solved because some aspect of the cover-up has gone awry. A botched cover-up much more commonly leads to the solution of a crime than does, for instance, criminals coming forward to confess.

The insecurity of the cover-up derives in part because it involves many more personnel than the initial operation – hundreds if not thousands compared to just a handful or possibly a few score for the initial operation.

The “need-to-know” principle of clandestine operations increasingly becomes a liability as the “need” factor expands. (Think of the personnel at NIST, at the FAA, at Underwriters Laboratories, at the City of New York, at the Pentagon, in the FBI and on and on, who knowingly have participated, and continue to participate, in the 9/11 cover-up.) Loose lips sink ships, as the Second World War billboards had it. Cover-up activities therefore are a significant Achilles Heel for the perpetrators.

AN ASSEMBLY LINE OF COVER-UPS WITHIN COVER-UPS

Luckily for them, this Achilles Heel is protected by a titanium heel guard in the form of the pre-installed machinery of deception, censorship and other forms of control firmly embedded within the modern national security state. This machinery for covering up their cover-ups now is almost unimaginably vast. Think COINTEL on steroids. Agents of the state are embedded in bureaucracies such as the FBI (essentially a national political police), in the judiciary, local police forces, academia and most importantly within the mainstream media as well as most so-called alternative media – all as gatekeepers.

Serial cover-ups of false flag ops and the cover-ups of those merge to become an ugly tapestry of fake history supporting the world of illusion that surrounds us. It’s as if we’re trapped in a real-life Truman Show. [2]

To summarize so far:

1 Four walls are erected around a false flag event to ensure as much as possible that as many people as possible will not see it for what it is, immediately or ever. The first wall is comprised of the illusory aspects of the event. The second wall is the initial (but ongoing) cover-up that reinforces the illusion. The third wall is the cover-up of the initial (but ongoing) cover-up. Finally, the fourth wall is the knitting together of current and previous cover-ups through subsequent illicit pilings-on.

2 The perceptual apparatus for seeing false flags to begin with, or seeing the telltale signs of their presence, and for conceiving of their enormity is hobbled by a widespread lack of enabling and thus empowering terminology.

3 It is not an exaggeration to say that the most important factors in human history and our lives – war and peace, life and death, the economy, bread and butter issues and the environment – have been, and continue to be, impacted with extreme negative prejudice by false flag operations, their cover-ups, and the ongoing blanket of covered-up cover-ups.

If all this seems too large a leap to imagine, consider lesser but still important realities through history that were unthinkable. One, that the Earth circles the sun, was officially and unofficially squelched from 270 BCE until past 1633, the year Galileo was convicted of “grave suspicion of heresy” [3] because he differed with the accepted perception, which was that the sun circled the Earth.

In the contemporary world consider just one category of reality that does not exist for most people because of the effective non-existence of a term to describe the reality. That term is “violence against men.” To be viable a term has to be on offer, to be widely used. When and where and how often have you encountered the term “violence against men?”

Everyone’s brain responds in milliseconds – emotionally and with images – to the commonly heard term “violence against women.” And rightly so, in the main. But hardly anyone ever thinks about a much larger category: violence against men. This is because no recognized “word slot” has been promoted and accepted for us to begin to store even the fundamental data within this category of reality. That reality is that for every woman who dies violently at least two men do. [4]

The effectively non-existent terminology includes men killed in wars (which they are in greater numbers than are women – and which, amazingly, are deleted from most tallies of violent deaths when those of men and women are being compared).

There are very legitimate reasons for treating male and female violent deaths differently, starting with the important as well as emotionally laden reality that more men kill women than women kill men, in war and peace, in both absolute and relative terms.

But does this justify there effectively existing no mental shelf or folder, no term for use generally, for identifying and storing data about the much more widespread phenomenon of violence against men?

The movement for women’s rights did not gain serious traction until the phrase “women’s rights” gained currency and enabled the concept to be discussed, so that the actions needed to win those rights could become thinkable – a prelude to them becoming reality.

WE UNDER-ESTIMATE THE POWER OF LANGUAGE AT OUR PERIL

The perpetrators of false flag operations are acutely aware of the importance of language. It is not just by the natural evolution of language that the term “the terrorist attacks of 9/11” has become the commonest descriptor – used almost universally on billions of occasions – of the treasonous criminal inside job of 9/11, which by no reasonable logic or linguistic rule could be called “an attack.” That compact descriptor contains the DNA of the 9/11 Big Lie, pre-defined by Mikhail Bakunin in a little-known phrase as “the propaganda of the act.” [5]

If one side of the 9/11 defining phraseology coin is inscribed “the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, 2001” the flip side should be inscribed “inside job” or “false flag operation.” But insofar as they can control the language, the perpetrators of false flag ops and their enablers and accomplices will do all in their considerable powers to render stillborn any word or phrase making linguistically available an alternative accurate descriptor for their deadly deceptions.

It’s relevant that the title of one of the best-researched and most insightful books on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by Canadian James Douglass. [6] The key word here is “unspeakable.”

For the term “false flag operation” to become ever more widespread – as is slowly happening – as a clear and meaningful mental category, will be very injurious to the perpetrators of false flag ops and their ongoing agenda. They must exert birth control over truthful politically relevant terminology. Perhaps the most effective prophylactic developed by the masterminds of psychological warfare regarding 9/11 and other false flag ops is the thought spermicide “conspiracy theorist,” otherwise known as a language bomb. [7]

It is not for nothing that we speak of “language tools.” Without the words, we cannot think the thoughts they denote. Thus the concept of the “power of naming.” Which in turn enables us to conceive of the power of the prevention of naming.

To further set the stage for this series on false flag operations consider just one of the many psychological issues surrounding them. That issue is perception, or more exactly perceptions: in the case of 9/11 the most calculated and damaging view of 9/11Truthers held from outside, and then the commonest view of 9/11 Truthers from inside the 9/11Truth movement. These views vie and interact.

SOME TRICKS OF ONE 9/11TRUTH DENIER

Start only with criticisms trotted out against 9/11Truthers by 9/11Truth Deniers and then only one of these criticisms. (Truthers’ self characterizations will be dealt with in Part 10 of the series.) On December 10^th, 2009, then Globe and Mail leftwing columnist Rick Salutin wrote an opinion pieced headed “Climategate’s Not Evil. It’s Just Unhinged.” [8]

His peg was the hysteria generated around that time by those in the climate change-denying lobby. They’d found a few political paragraphs in a huge database of otherwise scientific emails. After taking to task these climate change deniers, Salutin goes on to generalize in a negative way about those he says think their cause is the most important cause. In the third paragraph, he writes:

Now extend onto less average terrain and you get the “truthers,” who say 9/11 was a U.S. government plot masked by myths of hijacked planes; and the “birthers,” who insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. I use both since they are taken to represent the left and the right. I think it’s worth hearing their arguments but, when you do, you sense that nothing anyone says can shake them. This is symptomatic of non-medical craziness.

He continues:

Those university climate scientists have been accused of betraying science for politics, but they’re also human, and human beings are political. They weren’t betraying science, they were pursuing politics, and politics can make you crazy. One sign of this is that people with a passionate political cause often think all those who disagree with them are crazy (or evil). Another: They believe their issue is uniquely critical to the future or to survival.

A number of observations are in order. First Salutin’s wrongly lumping together two “Truther” communities as if they’re the same. [9] It’s a version of “the myth of symmetry.”

Second is the way he self-servingly positions himself as a rational (read superior) observer above it all, who adopts the self-advantageous “plague on both your houses” stance.

Third is what I would characterize from this column – as well as from the body of his opinions for more than a decade – as either insincerity (“I think it’s worth hearing their arguments”) or extreme inattentiveness to the massive evidence available to him regarding 9/11, or both. It need hardly be pointed out here that Salutin has been and remains a reliable 9/11Truth left gatekeeper.

He doesn’t use “obsessed” as a single word description of “non-medical craziness” but he might as well have. Others in tune with his stance have done so. One of the finest tributes, in my opinion, to my book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 was an offhand put-down by Martin Levin, books editor of The Globe and Mail. Levin wrote that Towers “is an often entertainingly obsessive rant.”

So this is the first psychological hinge point I want us to consider. Outsiders (this takes in a wide variety of people from immediate family members to the likes of Jonathan Kay, author of the book-length hit piece Among the Truthers) tend to seize on our relative single-mindedness and treat it as a flaw. “Non-medical craziness” isn’t the worst put-down lobbed in our direction.

It’s the case that obsession generally has a bad rep. Deservedly so when it involves a narrow and destructive passion, such as exhibited by a stalker.

THE CASE IN FAVOUR OF OBSESSION

But consider: Important achievements in science, literature, politics, religion and sports are generally if not usually associated with individuals or teams that are focused, dedicated, determined, persistent, single-minded, even obsessed. Especially – often by self-declaration – obsessed. As Barbra Streisand said: “I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details, for any artist to be good.”Or as Margueritte Harmon Bro put it: “Many people are inventive, sometimes cleverly so. But real creativity begins with the drive to work on and on and on.”

So one of many language and psychological tasks facing 9/11Truthers is rehabilitation and elevation of the meaning of obsessive associated with single-minded determination into a positive. We know we’re not closed-minded. Rather it’s those who won’t give the time of day to any of the evidence we have assembled who are closed-minded. They seem obsessed with not knowing.

Now to relative importance. Many – no make that most – people, including members of our own families, close friends or just acquaintances, see causes other than 9/11Truth as being the most important in their lives. In my own case I have family and friends who hold spirituality, animal rights, the environment, Canadian independence and anti-corporatism as their most important, judging by their words and actions.

I support most of them morally and at times with energy and money.

Currently I’m involved in a project to preserve and make available the history of progressive communities of all hues. My attitude is: if someone’s marching in the same general direction as I am, that’s great. And it’s not so bad when someone I’d hoped would espouse 9/11Truth declines. What is unacceptable is being attacked for pursuing 9/11Truth or for just questioning the official narrative.

A revolutionary cause, it has been said, requires only 10 per cent support from the population to succeed, even if 90 per cent stand aside. It’s the enemies of a worthy cause, and the mode of their operations, that we must pay close attention to.

This is why, in this series, five of 12 parts focus upon enemies of 9/11Truth and by extension enemies of the truth of false flag operations.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE PARTS:

The so-called “war on terror” is the subject of Part 2, Maximum Illusion Time, because this completely fake “war” is paradoxically an overarching ongoing “reality” in the world impacting everyone’s life to one extent or another. Many have suffered horrible deaths and deprivations because of it and continue to. It’s beyond remarkable that the “reality” of the so-called “war on terror” is such that one almost feels one could reach out and touch it, the way audience members in early 3D movies reached up to try to touch a flock of geese flying over them. Yet it’s only real in the worst Hollywood way. In the last five years, for instance, your chance of being killed by a terrorist were about one in 20 million; you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning. [10] Yet being human, you and I cannot prevent our nervous systems from triggering a fear reaction when we see the words “terrorist threat.” Such is psychological warfare.

Part 3, The Unlucky Seven, will examine seven false flag operations: the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, the 1933 Reichstag fire “set by Communists,” the 1939 “Polish attack” on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor in 1941, JFK’s 1963 assassination “by a lone gunman,” the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident in 1964 and finally “the attack by crazed Muslim hijackers” of 9/11.

These gigantic fakeries are chosen because it can be argued that each, after the first one, was a prelude for the following one. Each deserves book-length treatment in the library of every thinking citizen. Each marks an historic tragedy, a thwarting of humankind’s deep desire for peace. These false flag ops were enablers or triggers for war, arguably the greatest evil.

Part 4, How Could False Flag Frauds Be So Successful for So Long? One Question, Many Answers could be the final chapter except that it’s a bit of a downer, if an enlightening one. It’s also in the number three spot because it’s important to grasp early on the number and nature of the pillars and beams and rafters and struts (and sub-struts and sub-sub struts) in the support system for false flag ops and their foundations and superstructure, their camouflaging skins, their defense mechanisms, their apologists…

Part 5, Reasons for the Rise of 9/11Truth movement, is a counterpoint to Part 4. The rise of the movement has taken place despite the factors listed in the previous part that have supported the unbroken success record of false flag operations. Within the movement it’s important to enumerate our gains for morale purposes. The substance of this part also is unlikely to be of interest to conventional current affairs specialists or historians, so it’s also important to get it on the historical record. To date the 9/11Truth movement could be seen as a failed one. But considered in historical terms the quickness, self-organizing nature, creativity and persistence of pushback against the false flag fraud of 9/11 is unprecedented and has had a notable impact on public consciousness, as proven by repeated reputable public polls. The rise of such a large truth movement is of historical noteworthiness, even should it fail, and it very much remains to be seen whether it will.

AN ENEMIES LIST THAT CANNOT BE AVOIDED

Parts 6 through 10 are required to unbundle as much as possible the interwoven strata of establishments responsible for false flag operations.

Part 6, The Diaboligarchy, starts at the top of the pyramid of infamy. This is my invented word; others say the global elite, the Permanent Committee, the “invisible government” (Theodore Roosevelt), the pathocracy and so on. Whatever single word or phrase is selected to signify them, they are the most dangerous individuals in the most dangerous secret cabals on Earth, a network of networks. To get an idea of the wealth of them at the top, don’t miss this video of a remarkably well-done chart describing the obscene and mind-boggling maldistribution of wealth in the USA. [11]

Among the Diaboligarchy are the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the terror fraud of 9/11, as well as other false flag frauds such as London 7/7 and the Madrid train bombings. They have the largest stake in the cover-ups of the truths about these. They also hold media control and other powers that so far have enabled them to succeed in multiple ongoing cover-ups. This is where the phenomenon of psychopathy will be introduced.

It’s quite probable that the Diaboligarchy understands that potentially the main threat to their ongoing cover-up is the 9/11Truth movement. As students of history, they are not likely to under-estimate the threat posed to their malignant lives and interests by a minority of politically conscious, informed, passionate seekers of truth, justice and peace.

Top Secret World is the title of Part 7, patterned on a 2010 Washington Post series “Top Secret America.” [12] Of interest and concern here is the Diaboligarchy’s mammoth covert establishment worldwide. One measure of the vastness of this collectivity of Machiavellian minions is that in America alone are 854,000 persons with top security clearance, working for 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies out of more than 10,000 locations. Check the above footnote.

In Part 8, Left gatekeepers, as a sub-group within the total covert establishment, are close behind the totality of covert operators in the nasty damage department because of their knowing deliberate betrayal of a particular target population: well-meaning peace-loving Earth-caring citizens.

There is always a minority of the population, never more than 10 per cent, developing a political consciousness. It tends to grasp the larger picture – the picture that includes where power resides, who exercises it and how and why.

The Diaboligarchy knows that this minority must as much as possible be diverted, confused and if possible effectively lobotomized as a functioning part of what Peter Russell has called the Global Brain.

THE SHAME OF THE IVORY TOWER BLENDS WITH THE COMPLICITY OF TOWERS OF DECEPTION

And speaking of brains, Academia must be included in this Part of the rogues’ gallery. Like the Left (and there’s overlap) members of the Academy are self-identified as searchers for evidence, as well as defenders of free and untrammeled thought and opinion – in short seekers and teachers of truth. The reasons for their abdication from this role will be explored.

I tackle the Corpstream media in Part 9 because they are just a shade less damaging than the intellectual psychopaths of the gatekeeping left. The public mind is relatively amorphous compared to its politically conscious fraction. And corpstream media propaganda is generally more crude and easier to see through than the sophisticated high wire act practiced by left gatekeepers.

That Mainstream Media (MSM) propaganda is less effective than left gatekeeping propaganda is shown by the consistent resistance of the general public to the official story about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Decades of MSM propaganda supporting the official story of JFK’s demise have hardly budged the majority public understanding that he was killed by a government conspiracy. Also, MSM influence is in general decline with the continuing emergence of alternative sources of news, entertainment and information in general.

Part 10 picks up a mirror and, as Pogo said: We Have Seen the Enemy and it is Us. We cannot outsource all blame for the pickle we’re in. 9/11Truthers who are opposed to (fair) taxation, who blame capitalism alone or who engage in name-calling can unintentionally undermine 9/11Truth. We need to look inwards as well as see as clearly as we can what’s going on outside. And the two worlds are not hermetically sealed from each other.

Truthers ideally should be on board for peace, justice and social equity, be models and ambassadors for these larger goals. What makes us different from the majority of peace and social justice activists is that we understand that the single most important path to a safer saner world is to remove the most dangerous arrow in the Diaboligarchy’s quiver: false flag ops. Therefore 9/11Truth will remain our number one task until such time as another and possibly worse crime is launched against world peace and understanding.

“WHAT IS TRUTH?’ AND OTHER PUZZLERS

Part 11 is entitled Truth and Reconciliation. More than these two goals are treated but this title importantly sets up a long time frame. The emergence of truth on major issues typically has taken decades and often centuries. This throws a different, almost Buddhistic, light on what we should realistically aim for. It illuminates the best we deserve to expect and how our situation intersects with the meanings of our lives and the lives of others.

In this part it is asked what are, in fact, our aims and objectives. What exactly do Truthers mean by “truth?” It’s not so simple. Is “simply” truth, in and of itself, finally what we want? Or do we want truth as the necessary prerequisite for justice, and justice as the necessary basis for peace? To me, the answers are Yes and Yes. The more despairing questions “Can anything be done?” and “Is there any hope?” need also to be grappled with. What’s realistic to hope for? Is there a point in persevering when there is no realistic hope? What illusions must we shed? What are we willing to settle for?

Part 12 is Ways Forward. An attempt will be made to return to the central problem of false flag operations in as practical a way as possible. This is where “How to Spot Them” and “How to Stop Them” will be addressed.

There’s some evidence, for instance, that at least one false flag op was aborted because enough fact-laden advance alarm was disseminated that, had the operation gone ahead there would have been something close to a “smoking gun” scenario and that finally a false flag op might have been “outed” immediately and promptly, leading to much danger for the perpetrators.

This represents a handhold on the machinery of historic change realistically within the grasp of a network of passionate, determined people highly aware of the nature and towering significance of false flag operations.

FOOTNOTES

1 The author of the series cannot currently identify the author of the quotation. Information welcomed.

2 Selected from the Wikipedia entry on this movie

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show)

[a] Ronald Bishop of Sage Journals Online thought The Truman Show showcased the power of the media. “In the end, the power of the media is affirmed rather than challenged. In the spirit of Antonio Gramsci‘s concept of hegemony, these films and television programs co-opt our enchantment (and disenchantment) with the media and sell it back to us.”

[b] Utopia: Parallels [with The Truman Show] can be drawn from Thomas More‘s 1516 book Utopia, in which More describes an island with only one entrance and only one exit. Only those who belonged to this island knew how to navigate their way through the treacherous openings safely and unharmed. This situation is similar to The Truman Show because there are limited entryways into the world that Truman knows. Truman does not belong to this utopia into which he has been implanted, and childhood trauma rendered him frightened of the prospect of ever leaving this small community. Utopian models of the past tended to be full of like-minded individuals who shared much in common, comparable to More’s Utopia and real-life groups such as the Shakers and the Oneida Community. It is clear that the people in Truman’s world are like-minded in their common effort to keep him oblivious to reality. The suburban “picket fence” appearance of the show’s set is reminiscent of the “American Dream” of the 1950s. The “American Dream” concept in Truman’s world serves in an attempt to keep him happy and ignorant.

3 Based on his book Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems), which was then placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, from which it was not removed until 1835 (after the theories it discussed had been permitted in print in 1822.) In an action that was not announced at the time, the publication of anything else he had written or ever might write was also banned.

4 A United Nations poster text reads: “Each year more than 1.6 million people worldwide lose their lives to violence. For everyone who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health problems. Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15-44 years worldwide, accounting for about 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females in that age group.[My bold ital.] Because it is so pervasive, violence is often seen as an inevitable part of the human condition.”

An Internet search will show how difficult, even in a world drenched with data, to find basic stats on the ratio of male violent deaths compared with female violent deaths. Virtually all of the hits found by entering “violence against men” in a Google search deal only with domestic violence. Violent deaths in war, overwhelmingly male, are hidden away like the proverbial needle in a haystack. For instance the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention leave out war, apparently, as seen in this excerpt, in which the numbers literally do not add up:

“Globally, more than nine people die every minute from injuries or violence—that’s 5.8 million people of all ages and economic groups who die each year from both unintentional and violence related injuries. […] The three leading causes of injury and violence-related deaths are road traffic incidents (1.3 million), suicides (844,000), and homicides (600,000).”

At Worldmapper we read: “The violent deaths shown here are homicide (murder and manslaughter), but exclude deaths due to war. In 2002 over half a million people died violent deaths.”

But even in the sad category of domestic violence it appears true that 61% of men treated in emergency rooms for injuries suffered in domestic violence are men, and 39% women. From

http://theawarenesscenter.blogspot.ca/2012/07/domestic-violence-against-men-is-most.htmlwe read:

“Some indication of the disparity between men and women concerning their relative likelihood of reporting violent victimizations can be gleaned from medical emergency room records. For example, in 1994, the majority (61%) of hospital emergency room patients treated for intimate-violence-related injuries were men, while nearly half as many (39%) were women. Yet, the vast majority (more than 90%, according to some authorities) of the reports to authorities of violent victimizations by intimates were made by women.

“If, as all the reliable data suggests (see above), males are at least as likely to be victims of domestic abuse as females are, yet only 10% of those who choose to report the incident to authorities are male, then we must conclude not only that women are more willing than men to report the incident to authorities when they are abused, but that women are about 9 times more likely than men to report when they have been victims of abuse. The survey research tends to corroborate the hypothesis that women are indeed 9 times more likely than men to report it to police when they have been assaulted by their spouses.

“What evidence there is suggests that most men have to be very severely injured before they will even consider reporting an incident or threat of domestic abuse to the authorities. And even then, it is doubtful that they will. Unlike most women, it would not even cross most men’s minds to report their partners to authorities or take any other kind of legal action because they have been pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or had their hair pulled. And unlike most women, most men do not choose to make a report even after they have been so severely wounded that they have to be transported to the hospital in an ambulance – or indeed, even after they have had their penises lopped off.”

The same site provides 78 reasons for under-reporting domestic violence against men.

5 Although usually attributed to the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Wikipedia correctly notes:

One of the first individuals to conceptualise propaganda by the deed was the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818–57), who wrote in his “Political Testament” (1857) that “ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around.” Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his “Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis” (1870) stated that “we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda.”[2]

The phrase propaganda by the deed was popularized by the French anarchistPaul Brousse (1844–1912). In his article of that name, published in the August 1877 Bulletin of the Jura Federation, Brousse cited the 1871 Paris Commune, a workers’ demonstration in Bern provocatively using the socialist red flag, and the Benevento uprising in Italy as examples of “propaganda by the deed.”[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed

6 http://www.amazon.ca/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

7 The phenomenon of “language bombs,” otherwise known as thought-stoppers, designed to destroy the emergence of important language tools such as false flag operations, will be dealt with in this series. In the bunkerbuster category of language bombs is “conspiracy theorist.”

8 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/climategates-not-evil-its-just-unhinged/article4311128/

9 This lumping together trick is trotted out by almost all 9/11Truth Deniers. One of the most egregious examples is Jonathan Kay and his book Among the Truthers: A Journey into the Growing Conspiracist Underground of 9/11Truthers, Birthers, Armageddonites, Vaccine Hysterics, Hollywood Know-Nothings and Internet Addicts. Kay evidently had second thoughts about his sub-title, as the original is hard to find, being replaced by A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground. One gets well into the second page of Google hits before one can find the original s ub-title.

10 (http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should)

11 http://www.snotr.com/video/10754/Wealth_distribution_in_US

12 http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

***

An author’s note: Why write about false flags?

 “Why?” is the most important of “The Five W’s” of journalism – who, what, when, where, why. “Why this series?” is a fair question for readers to ask of the author.

The simple answer is that I’ve come to believe that false flag operations are the single most effective and therefore dangerous ruse of rulers to trigger wars, get away with assassinating domestic enemies and other crimes.

Then why, in turn, have I come to believe this? The answer is less simple. A blend of factors have led me to my present worldview.

Which is that the main reason peace (whatever your definition of it may be) does not prevail on Earth is because forces that benefit from conflict and war hold the balance of power and perhaps always have. While the majority of people have always wanted peace, the forces that benefit from conflict and war have been successful in tricking the majority into supporting wars. The rulers’ main weapon is deception, and their deceptions have become increasingly sophisticated.

From an early age I took it for granted that world peace was the ultimate cause. My father was a United Church clergyman. “Prince of Peace” was the description of Jesus he most used. This goal has remained with me but paradoxically, because I’ve been obliged to revise my understandings of how the world works, has also taken a back seat.

The paradox rests on the hard-won understanding that we cannot achieve lasting peace without justice. And that we cannot achieve justice without securing truth.

Therefore it’s not logical to seek peace directly. Peace not based on justice, and justice not based on truth, will not last. Truth is the necessary prerequisite beginning for the two that follow. Truth is foundational. After truth becomes known – in any situation from the intimately personal to the vast historical – paths open that can lead to lasting peace. One path is justice. Another path is reconciliation. It’s relevant that South Africans established a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. They left out justice.

The first factor that propelled me toward my current understandings was an instinctive skepticism from about the age of 12. The second factor was the Cold War from which I was alienated from the beginning. I became suspicious of conventional thinking, of “invisible axioms” that “everyone” believed, usually without being able to explain why. Or if they explained they were obviously parroting the official line. Third I was drawn to journalism, in which I was paid to “dig, dig, dig.”

I clung, however, to the goal and dream of peace for most of my life, marching in peace parades and promoting a peace agenda many other ways. It was not until my deeper studies of communications and of political power opened my eyes that I saw that marching for peace was destined to fail so long as the majority of people could be persuaded that war after war had to be supported.

Without consciously setting about to do it, I began a search for the truth about who starts wars, and why, and how they start them, and how they extend them, and how they profit from postwar reconstruction just as they do from the wars, and how these war-supporting forces have perfected  a “mightly Wurlitzer” of false notes that plays pro-war lies nonstop. Being inside the media from age 15 to the present helped. I then turned, in 1970, to media criticism. At first I dwelt on mis-used words, then missed stories, then to decision-making in the media, then to the ownership structure. This led me to the existence of the ultra-rich, ultra-privileged, ultra-powerful of the world, the network of oligarchies that I dubbed the Diaboligarchy and finally to the Diaboligarchy’s deepest secret: the false flag operation.

War makes me angry and sad and frustrated. Especially now that I know that mainly invisible Western forces are driving the killing in Syria, for instance, as they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. It makes me angry and sad and frustrated to anticipate a false flag operation in which Iran will be blamed for god-knows-what to justify a horrible attack on Iran by Israel and the USA. Most of the mainstream evening TV news makes me angry and sad and frustrated, because there’s little digging but much acceptance of “invisible axioms.”

My personal motivations include the future of my grand-daughter and the death of my wife’s father (that I wrote about in my reflections on Remembrance Day for Truth and Shadows).

Something I did not include in that piece was what happened after a seven-year-old girl living in Owen Sound, Ontario, learned in 1945 that her father Charlie had been killed in the Second World War while serving in the Canadian Army in Holland. She learned it by hearing her mother wailing as she approached their home for lunch. She knew right away what that meant. What happened was that in the middle of that night she sleep-walked for the first and only time in her life. Her mother and grandmother found her on a road called The Goat Path – searching for her lost Dad. That girl became my wife.

My emotions spilled over the last time I visited Charlie’s grave, in the summer of 2005, at the immaculate Canadian war cemetery near Nijmegen, Holland. I was alone. I hugged his gravestone and sobbed. It was a spontaneous reaction for which I am not in the least embarrassed. It’s also a reaction I have analyzed. My grief was and is for Charlie himself, 36 when he was cut down days before war’s end. It’s for his family, his widow who was left to raise a family alone for many years until she finally remarried. It’s for my wife. It’s for the millions of others – soldiers and civilians, even children as young as my wife was, or younger — who have been blasted to smithereens, gone spiraling down from the sky, drowned grievously wounded in muddy ditches, been mowed down by machine guns to fall back into graves they themselves had been forced to dig.

Why this series? It’s fuelled by anger. Come to think of it, that’s not the why. It’s the what.

]]> http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/secrecy-perceptions-and-cover-ups-false-flags-part-1-introduction/feed/ 64 craigmckee45 aerial 911 collapse - NYPD lightened 1 False flags revised http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/truth-and-shadows-launches-exclusive-barrie-zwicker-series-on-false-flags-the-most-destructive-of-deceptions/ http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/truth-and-shadows-launches-exclusive-barrie-zwicker-series-on-false-flags-the-most-destructive-of-deceptions/#comments Sat, 30 Mar 2013 02:49:08 +0000 Craig McKee http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/?p=1281 ]]>

By Craig McKee

It was suggested to me some months ago by a reader that the name of the 9/11 Truth movement should be changed to the False Flag Awareness movement.

While I didn’t think the suggestion was very practical (how do you go about changing the name of a movement?), the idea of putting 9/11 in the larger context of false flags stayed with me. Not only would it help people to understand what the event was really all about, but it also would show how 9/11 is not unique but instead part of a continuum that goes back centuries.

It makes sense to me that we should work to raise awareness that events like 9/11 are not isolated or outside of the normal pattern of manipulation and control by the powerful over the powerless, they are business as usual.

I know that many “official story” believers wonder why some of us are still questioning the truth about 9/11 more than 11 years after the event. Why don’t we just move on?

The answer, of course, is that this is not only an event that continues to have terrible repercussions for the world (horrific wars, ridiculous arms spending, and the accelerating destruction of privacy and personal freedoms), but it is not an event that “changed the world forever” as we’ve been told so often. It just continued a longstanding process of global elites controlling the masses through intimidation and deception.

What 9/11 did do was hurtle us forward in the direction in which we were already heading. But it definitely took the game to a new level. Is there anyone in the 9/11 Truth movement who isn’t familiar with these prophetic words from the 2000 document  “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” created by the neocon Project for a New American Century?:

“… the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

They could easily have written, “… some catastrophic and catalyzing false flag event” but that would have been a bit too honest.

So, with 9/11, we skipped the long, slow “process of transformation” and went straight to imperial conquest in overdrive. Invasions, the brazen toppling of regimes, and drone attacks on civilians by the hundreds are barely being questioned by the majority of Americans and Canadians (one would hope that the awareness outside of North America is somewhat greater).

Terrorism was certainly painted as a menace before 9/11, but after that, it became the focal point of our collective world view. But what the majority of us don’t understand is that the terrorism we fear so much is often the creation of our own governments: a systematic policy of committing and justifying mass murder for profit.

In our artificial obsession, we have been conned into believing that we have to change our way of life to protect ourselves against terrorists. But in reality, the terrorists are our own civilian, corporate, intelligence, and military leaders.

In Barrie Zwicker’s essential book on this monumental false flag operation, Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 9/11, he devotes a section to false flags through history. He writes about the sinking of the Maine in 1898, the Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933, and the “sneak attack” at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Zwicker is a career journalist, author, documentary producer, and media critic in Toronto, Canada. He was the first journalist to state on national television anywhere in the world that 9/11 was an inside job.

When Barrie and I met over dinner in Montreal in late 2011, I learned that he was working on a book on the subject of false flags. I was excited by the prospect because I consider him to be as valuable a source on the subject as there is. This is a book I want to read, I thought.

At the time, I floated the idea of Barrie contributing something to this blog at some point (Nobody can say I lack nerve: the creator of a one-year-old blog asking one of the most respected journalists in Canada to write for him). My real hope was that he might at some point consider writing an essay on false flags for T & S, summarizing what he would address in his book.

But after contributing several articles on other subjects in recent months, Barrie is going one better than the false flag essay I was hoping for. A big one.

In the next few days, he will begin a series of articles on false flag operations, and he’ll be doing it right here on this site. The series will not only help us to understand and recognize false flags, past and future, but it will specifically use 9/11 to illustrate just how the phenomenon works and how devastating the consequences can be.

The installments of this series will appear on a regular basis over the next year or more. Of course, in between these installments, I’ll be writing plenty of articles on 9/11 and other related topics, including several on the 50^th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

Barrie will be introducing his series in an article in the next few days, so I’ll leave most of the detail to him, but I do expect that I and all our readers will learn a great deal about what a false flag operation is and how it has been used throughout history to deceive us all.

This is a review of the documentary film Shadows of Liberty; 93 minutes; PG; Jean-Philippe Tremblay, United Kingdom, director; 2012; distributed by KinoSmith Inc.


 By Barrie Zwicker (Special to Truth and Shadows)

I’m hard-pressed not to see Shadows of Liberty as other than a bait-and-switch job, a false flag op that seeks to marshal audience confidence if not admiration by blowing the whistle on a handful of media crimes not widely known to the general public, but that in the end distracts audiences from much larger media crimes, particularly media complicity in the cover-up of the truth about 9/11.

Because so few documentaries take on the corpstream media energetically, for the “average viewer” this one might rate one thumb up, just as Noam Chomsky provides some nourishment about U.S. imperialism while performing left gatekeeping on really significant crimes from JFK’s assassination through 9/11.

The strengths of Shadows of Liberty include that it dares to use capitalism as a bad word and that it provides a handful of important case histories of corporate malfeasance. It’s technically well-done in my old-fashioned view but some younger reviewers might find it somewhat plodding.

The weaknesses (or if they’re intended, the perverse strengths) of this documentary are several.

The film includes a medley of cases when two or even one would have enabled more damning detail, putting more oomph into the project. As well, the cases are rather old. The lead-off case is NBC’s craven collusion with Nike as media sponsor of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics even after Nike was thoroughly exposed by an NBC investigation for its Third World sweatshop conditions. NBC killed a follow-up of its original expose.

Others include Gary Webb’s 1996 exposé of CIA involvement in the crack cocaine epidemic; the 2006 NBC “To Catch a Predator” media-police sting that led to a justice official’s suicide; and Colin Powell’s February 2003 dog and pony “proof” at the UN of Saddam’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps most telling, the talking heads that are the spine of Shadows of Liberty are all 9/11Truth left gatekeepers; some also are left gatekeepers on other fraught issues, such as JFK’s assassination.[1] More about these talking heads further on.

Shadows has attracted self-interested positive blurbs by film festivals, where people who love the film are the same ones who love left gatekeeper Noam Chomsky. An audience fooled – and partly prepared to be fooled– by Chomsky will be sitting ducks to be fooled by Shadows of Liberty. They’ll be treated to a generalized critique of the capitalist media, built on an expose of a half dozen assorted cases. This could lead viewers to envelop themselves in a cocoon of satisfied indignation while remaining oblivious to the omissions and misdirections that are the main, if invisible, flaws(or successes) of this film.

TWA Flight 800 as double litmus test

The strongest case included in the documentary by Canadian-born director, producer and co-writer Jean-Philippe Tremblay for proving that corporate media kowtow to military industrial financial elites is the destruction of TWA flight 800 over Long Island the night of July 17^th, 1996. All 230 Paris-bound passengers and crew died. It was the second-deadliest aviation disaster in U.S. history. Other things being equal (which they never are) Tremblay could almost certainly have made a documentary with more impact by taking on TWA 800 alone.

To summarize this case clearly, as the documentary fails to do, there can be no reasonable doubt that the airliner was shot down by a US Navy missile. It was an error during an incredibly irresponsible “live fire” exercise at the edge of a major civilian airway.

There additionally can be no reasonable doubt that what ensued was one of the most thoroughly co-ordinated official cover-ups in U.S. history, reaching to the White House and rivaling the 9/11 cover-up. More than a dozen official agencies, including the U.S. Navy, Central Intelligence Agency, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Agency, U.S. Coast Guard and New York National Air Guard colluded either very quickly or over months in the brazen cover-up spearheaded by the organizing black widow spider, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its chief stinger, one James Kallstrom.

Media giant CBS then joined. It’s hard to know whether CBS on the one hand, or all other corpstream media on the other, were more complicit on the media side of the equation. CBS began by authorizing an investigation, then betraying its investigators. The other media didn’t even try. Take your pick.

TWA flight 800 is a case I hardly ever hear referred to in 9/11Truth circles, yet it clearly ranks up there with Oklahoma City and the assassination of Paul Wellstone (NTSB and CIA involvement being common to both).

Once CBS caved in to the government and killed its own investigation it had to disappear one of its best journalists, investigative producer Kristina Borjesson. She had previously won an Emmy and a Murrow Award for her work.[2]

Borjesson didn’t stay disappeared. She went on to assemble and edit a 2002 hard copy anthology, Into The Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.[3]

The book’s 18 chapters provide evidence of betrayals by mainstream media of the sacred responsibility to inform; three of them deal with TWA 800. Since Borjesson co-operated fully in the making of the documentary, director Tremblay had to be closely familiar with the Buzzsaw chapters dealing with TWA 800. These comprise an excellent primer on the case.

The book makes mention of Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization (FIRO). FIRO perseveres in a way 9/11Truthers can identify with, but fails to make it into the documentary. (I owe to Truth and Shadows readers a caution that I saw Shadows of Liberty once, last month, and have no access to seeing it again. So memory failures on my part about some details are possible. I will appreciate anyone’s setting me straight if needs be.)

In her TWA 800 chapter in Buzzsaw, Borjesson lists questions that arose early on about the TWA 800 disaster, a list Tremblay fails to include:

• What was a sub hunter doing in the area?
• Why was a missile cruise ship in the area?
• Why did the Pentagon deny military presence in the area that night?
• Why was the FBI involved from day one, when normal procedure is to have the NTSB determine cause?
• How do you write off the findings of missile experts who stated [that] what [civilian] witnesses saw was consistent with a missile?
• How is it that military personnel in the area reported seeing nothing when civilians saw a lot?

A straight bulleted text of these questions in the documentary would have been memorable, and indeed easily twice as many questions could have been bulleted. The list above was included in an October 18^th, 1996 memo written by CBS’s law enforcement consultant, Paul Ragonese. Ragonese is described by Borjesson as “a no-bullshit cop from Brooklyn” who served on the New York Police Department bomb squad and counter-terrorism squad for six years. Ragonese also learned, from two high-level members of the FBI’s task force into the disaster, that three months after it occurred, their superiors still had not given them permission to ask any questions of the military.

But in Shadows, director Tremblay, instead of pursuing or even just including such questions, chooses to highlight one piece of incriminating evidence (seat fabric proven independently to be laced with residue of missile solid fuel) obtained by Borjesson but supinely returned to the authorities by CBS. The media giant allowed itself to be bullied by the government’s puerile claim that the evidence was stolen. Meanwhile the FBI was stealing or tampering with hundreds of pieces of evidence.

One need not have years of experience analyzing media to imagine how beneficial to the public interest and for CBS’s reputation it would have been for CBS to stand its ground and fight the government demand. It would have triggered a showdown the government would have lost, at least in the court of public opinion. It would have approached the status of the refusal of The New York Times to hand over the Pentagon Papers.

Since the damning seat fabric highlighted by Tremblay presumably will never be seen again, The Globe and Mail’s Kate Taylor was able to write in a Feb. 15 review of Shadows that the segment on TWA 800 was one of those “twisted tales that are the subject of conspiracy theories.” The viewer “can’t really know” whether Borjesson “was a victim of a complicit media owner with arms contracts at stake buying the government line or just an obsessive reporter who wouldn’t accept it was time to take a new assignment.” The thought-stopping “conspiracy theory” putdown is trotted out for the readers of Taylor’s review. “Obsessive” is just kicking Borjesson after knocking her down.

What would have gone a long way toward clinching in the documentary’s audiences’ minds that TWA 800 was a massive government-orchestrated cover-up was the number of eyewitnesses who saw the streak of light the Navy missile made as it screamed into the civilian airliner. Tremblay failed to highlight this aspect.

Genuine 9/11Truthers will note a close parallel here with the eyewitness reports, gathered by Citizen Investigation Team, of the large jet that overflew the Pentagon on 9/11, eyewitness reports that reveal the alleged impact of Flight 77 for the big lie it is.

Those damned eyewitnesses

As Borjesson writes in Buzzsaw: “The FBI’s ‘thing’ about the eyewitnesses was…apparent at the [NTSB’s] public hearings held on December 8^th, 1997 in Baltimore, Maryland. Days before the hearing, James Kallstrom [the FBI’s evil genius lead liar and bully, key manipulator and cover-up co-ordinator-in-chief] wrote to NTSB Chairman James Hall to ask that information on the eyewitnesses and the red residue found on the seats not be discussed at the hearing. Hall complied with Kallstrom’s request.”

Philip Weiss, who currently co-edits Mondoweiss, wrote about TWA 800 for the New York Observer. He recounts in Buzzsaw that he first learned about an alternative view of the disaster at a forum in Washington, D.C. conducted by the right wing group Accuracy In Media. “A beefy and homespun former navy aviator named Bill Donaldson gave a rambling talk about his personal investigation of the matter,” Weiss writes. The talk included audiotapes of several interviews Donaldson had done with eyewitnesses. “The eye witnesses,” writes Weiss, “sounded calm and sane, and each of them said that he had seen a flare-like streak go up from the surface of the sea, followed after some seconds by a fireball in the sky.”

Intrigued, Weiss went to the community of Centre Moriches near the crash scene and found a half-dozen eyewitnesses himself. “What I found – and what many other reporters found, before and after me – was that there existed a large group of people who had seen something that the government later saw very differently. Indeed, these people felt misrepresented by the government version and insulted by the cartoon enactment of the crash that the CIA had produced, without talking to a single one of them.” (James Kallstrom lied that the CIA had talked to them.)[4]

Eventually 670 eyewitnesses were tracked down by a phalanx of hostile FBI interrogators. The eyewitnesses’ statements were buried or squelched one way or another. The NTSB spoke only to about a dozen of them, according the NTSB Witness Group Chairman Dr. David Mayer.

A final note about eyewitnesses: A series of specials entitled “Oliver Stone’s Declassified” was given the green light byABC in the Summer of 1997.[5] An early segment of the series was to be on TWA 800, focusing not on the disaster per se but rather on “an investigation of the investigation.” The print equivalent in 9/11Truth terms would be David Ray Griffin’s The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions.

Thirty eyewitnesses had been found willing to go on camera for a national TV audience. As the shoot was being set up, Stone received word that ABC had cancelled his series. “Oliver Stone said it was one of the worst things that had ever happened to him in his professional life,” Borjesson writes in Buzzsaw.

THE 9/11 bait-and-switch

But it is its failure of to pass the litmus test of 9/11 that should earn Shadows of Liberty Most Dubious Documentary standing in the Left Gatekeeper Bait-and-Switch Awards.

Introducing 9/11 with iconic if overused footage of airliners, Shadows of Liberty strongly suggests that the audience is about to learn the truth behind the crime of 9/11. It then drops the ball entirely. It leads the audience astray into the story of Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish-speaking translator for the FBI. Edmonds became a whistle-blower regardingone of the numerous cases of alleged foreknowledge of “Bin Laden’s group… planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States.”

Since bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11 (apart from being made the patsy) Edmonds’ “information” about “foreknowledge” was the opposite of information. What she chanced on was one small link in a chainof disinformation: multiple claims, planted worldwide, of an imminent “al Qaeda attack.” These were planned to surface over time lending verisimilitude to the “al Qaeda attack” Big Lie.

For Tremblay to trot out the Edmonds case as proof of lack of truth-telling by government and media is akin to a film that introduces a dreadful bus crash, with bodies lying all over the place, that then focusesits investigation on a broken tail-light – on a nearby car.

On the trail of the trailer

Proof of bait-and-switchism is highlighted in the doc’s trailer. Trailers arewhere films’ creators put their best feet forward. The first voice heard is that of Amy Goodman, notorious 9/11Truth left gatekeeper. Her first words are: “All we ever get is a veil of distortion and lies.” She should know. Later she beats the drum for the film’s main contention: “Corporations are making profits off the killing.” This clip accurately reflects the documentary as a whole, in itsemphasis on the danger of commercial control of information.

Seems worthy at first hearing. But is commerce finally the devilish core of the problem? I would argue not. First of all, the vast omissions, serial distortions and outright lies of corpstream media arise from their collusion with right wing ideological equal-opportunity wrong-doing partners in the highest reaches of the financial, military and surveillance elites. This collusion at the expense of profit is inherent even in the case of CBS’s TWA 800 crime of omission,and even as depicted in Shadows.CBS surely would have raked in a handsome profit by blowing the case wide open.

Secondly, if private-for-profit broadcasters are the final problem, how explain the craven obfuscation, truth marginalization and outright lying of public broadcasters such as PBS, the CBC and my favourite nomination for ongoing media scum, the long-compromised and infiltrated smarmy BBC? These and most other public broadcasters and print outlets have shown themselves complicit accessories after the fact in the state crimes of 9/11 by seldom even questioning, let alone investigating them.

Now look at the other left media critics besides Amy Goodman given platforms in Shadows of Liberty. All are, like her, 9/11Truth left gatekeepers: actor-activist Danny Glover, whose presence more than one reviewer found puzzling; Dan Rather (also a notorious JFK assassination gatekeeper); Daniel Ellsberg; WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; Norman Solomon, founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy; David Simon, son of a PR director for B’nai B’rith;media and communications guru Robert McChesney; Janine Jackson of F.A.I.R. (Fairness and Accuracy In Media) and the otherwise terrific Chris Hedges — a Rogue’s Gallery of 9/11Truth left gatekeepers.

All, either directly or by association, in this documentary identify lying, censorship, militarism, secrecy, corruption and pursuit of power as toxic hallmarks of corpstream media. True enough. But oddly and tellingly, not one of them mentions the supreme crime and power of these media. That is omission. It’s startlingly evident in the case of 9/11 but also, in this documentary, in most of the cases dealt with.

The trailer, true to the film overall, winds up its list of sins with a triple mention of the film’s chosen key sin: “Profit, profit, profit.”

On the trail of the profit motive

Sure profits run thicker than blood, but ideology runs thicker than profits, as can be seen when nations go bankrupt pursuing war. It’s the Unholy Alliance (to borrow the title of Gary Webb’s series on the CIA) — not just the profit motive — between corporations and the national security-surveillance state that’s the radioactive core of the diaboligarchy that’s killing the Earth and all upon it.

Profit, in the biggest picture, is a by-product. Distorting as its pursuit is, it’s less lethal than psychopaths pursuing every kind of power. When they have media power, which they always do, they will sacrifice media profits in the greater cause of serving the diaboligarchy’s war and financial goals and systems.

This documentary is itself a minor example of how profit-taking is secondary or even subsidiary. Shadows of Liberty is unlikely to return even a small profit. But by stealthily misleading the opinion leaders who attend film festivals, it does its bit to redirect the public mind away from the seat of problems with the media and heir partners in crime. By doing so it protects them. So what entity would bankroll it? There’s an answer to that question. It’s the UK’s docfactory, an avowedly for-profit film services outfit. Yet its documentaries are not likely big money spinners, to say the least. It’s not immediately transparent how it stays solvent. Currently it’s working on Article 12. This focuses on personal privacy when its focus should be the depredations of the national security-surveillance state. Privacy may be almost a lost cause but exposing the vast spy, disinformation and false flag networks should not be.

By all means go and see Shadows of Liberty if it comes to a cinema near you. You’ll enjoy some generalized inspiration including great quotes from revolutionary journalist Thomas Paine. The film’s title is inspired by Paine: “When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.” His sentiment must be applied to this film. When it is, it will become evident that despite surface appearances Shadows is more part of the problem than of the solution.

***

[1] The most egregious case here is that of Dan Rather, who notoriously reversed, in his JFK assassination report on the Zapruder film, the direction JFK’s head as he was shot. Rather’s account had the bullet entering JFK’s head from the rear, supporting the lone gunman theory. The truth of the film, not revealed until 1975, was the JFK’s head was knocked backwards, showing the fatal bullet came from the grassy knoll in front. In the case of TWA 800, Rather decided to lead his show one night with former White house press secretary Pierre Salinger’s claim that a navy missile was involved. He did so, he told New York Times reporter Matthew Purdy “primarily in order to knock it down.” Borjesson writes that Rather “(purposely or inadventently) took off his journalist’s hat and became a communications officer for the government. It wouldn’t be the last time.” One would think that Shadows of Liberty director Tremblay would consider Rather damaged goods for his documentary, if not a time bomb.

[2] Borjesson now is a key member of The WantToKnow.Info Team.

[3]( http://www.amazon.com/Into-Buzzsaw-LEADING-JOURNALISTS-EXPOSE/dp/1591022304).

[4] Malicious irony had to be in the black hearts of the behind-the-scenes players when CBS fired Ragonese as its law enforcement consultant and replaced him with none other than James Kallstrom.

[5] This was around the same time that a book on TWA 800 to be co-authored by Borjesson with the working title Unauthorized Access was scuttled. The reason was that the would-be authors’ literary agent’s auction failed because every publisher that had shown an early interest backed out.

We would have shown this to be the scene of a faked plane crash.

By Craig McKee

An international conference on 9/11 being organized in France by a little known quantity within the 9/11 Truth movement, literature professor William Schnabel, has been cancelled for unknown reasons.

The conference was scheduled for Sept. 11-13 at the University of Lorraine in the city of Nancy. Schnabel, who teaches at the university, issued a “call for papers” last fall – with a Dec. 25 deadline for submission. Those wishing to make presentations to the conference were required to submit a 300-word abstract stating what their presentation would be about. Those selected would be informed by Feb. 1. Before that date arrived, however, we got the news that there would be no conference. Participants were informed in a brief email. No explanation was given.

I was part of a group that collaborated on one of the proposals. Had we been selected, our group would have made a presentation to the conference on our chosen topic – the evidence that no large plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

Our group consisted of Paul Zarembka, an economics professor at State University of New York at Buffalo and editor of The Hidden History of 9-11; Dennis McMahon, a lawyer who has represented 9/11 families and who is a member of the Consensus 9/11 Panel; and Shelton Lankford, a retired pilot and member of Pilots for 9/11 Truth. And me.

Noted truther Barrie Zwicker submitted his own proposal for a paper on the importance of language in shaping perceptions about 9/11. I would very much have looked forward to this presentation because I share Barrie’s views about the subject, which I have written about on Truth and Shadows. Zarembka also submitted a second proposal to the conference on the subject of the Toronto 9/11 Hearings, which took place in Sept. 2011.

Zwicker shared with me that he wrote to Schnabel recently to ask for details of the cancellation, but he has received no response.

I’m disappointed that the conference didn’t happen and that I’ll never know if our group would have been selected, but I’m not entirely surprised. There were questions about the conference from the beginning. The first concern I had was with the “call for papers.” This featured very troubling statements made as if they were uncontested facts. The first paragraph started things off in very problematic way:

“On September 11th, a series of airplane hijackings and suicide attacks were committed against strategic targets in the United States. Nearly three thousand people were killed in New York City, almost two hundred at the Pentagon and forty more died near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in the open countryside, shortly after 10 a.m. The United States and the world were taken by surprise that fateful morning when hijackers seized four jet airliners.”

Schnabel, perhaps in an effort to appease colleagues unsympathetic to the 9/11 cause, made several assumptions in that first paragraph that are at best unproven and at most flat out wrong:

• The four planes were hijacked? – The evidence says no. In fact there is no proof that any of the 19 alleged hijackers ever stepped on any of the planes.
• Suicide attacks? – See above.
• Flight 93 crashed near Shanhksville? – This is totally false. There was very little wreckage at the scene; just a ditch and some smoke. Oh, and a singed passport of one of the “hijackers.”
• Strategic targets attacked? Calling them attacks suggests that it was external enemies who were behind the event. False.
• The United States was taken by surprise? If he means the government, the evidence says otherwise. The military stand-down makes that clear.

That was just the first paragraph. Later, the paper makes this statement:

• America’s law enforcement and intelligence communities have addressed the nation’s vulnerabilities, the result of which has been the reorganization of the federal government, notably with the creation of Homeland Security, new FBI focus, the implementation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) and the Patriot Act, increased border surveillance, and so on.

Again, an assumption is made that shouldn’t be, that America was vulnerable and that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a genuine response to that.

Here are a couple of other softball points:

• It goes without saying that not all researchers concur with the official version of the events.
• Many questions have been raised concerning the Kean-Hamilton Report, not all of which have been satisfactorily answered.

Have ANY been satisfactorily answered?

If one were to give Schnabel and whomever else was involved some benefit of the doubt, one could note these statements might have been written the way to keep the focus broad – in other words not exclusively on the question of whether 9/11 was an inside job. He may have been dealing with hostile colleagues who opposed the conference altogether.

The document concludes with this: “… there are several avenues of investigation possible: historical, psychological, geopolitical, legal, architectural, social, cinematographic, economic, scientific, militaristic, journalistic, and so on. Papers supporting the American government’s position are welcome, as are those critical of it, or taking a more neutral stand.”

That’s about as broad as you can get. Perhaps too broad.

Schnabel contacted Zwicker last August to invite him to be a speaker. In correspondence between the two, Zwicker offered his suggestions on things to watch out for in organizing the conference, choosing speakers, security, technical issues like sound, etc.

Zwicker has plenty of experience in these areas, having been involved in organizing the six-day International Citizens’ Inquiry Into 9/11, held at The University of Toronto in May 2004. He also collaborated with Citizen Investigation Team in organizing a screening of their film National Security Alert the night of the closing of the Toronto 9/11 Hearings in 2011.

One thing our group found strange was that Schnabel wanted personal information from each individual or group that included not only a curriculum vitae, photo and contact information but also a photocopy of a personal identity card.

Not all truthers in France are big supporters of professor Schnabel. The country’s largest 9/11 Truth group, Reopen 911, is not communicating with him at all. One point of contention, apparently, is that Schnabel wrote a letter to the editor to a French publication in which he mentioned support for a number of familiar 9/11 Truth movement figures (it included David Ray Griffin, Webster Tarpley, Thierry Meyssan, Barrie Zwicker and others). But among those listed were two very controversial figures, David Icke and Eric Hufschmid (Icke for his “reptilian” views and Hufschmid because he is seen by many as being anti-Semitic). The group evidently felt that by endorsing the latter two, the Truth movement could be open to ridicule.

For this and other reasons, some people may feel that the cancellation of the conference may not be such a loss after all.

The submissions won’t lead to anything directly, but the exercise was still a worthwhile one. At least it was for me since I had never been involved in anything like this before. The collaborative process went very well, I thought, especially considering the fact that we were all located in different cities – and in my case in a different country.

The “no large plane hit the Pentagon” presentation won’t happen in France this September, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see anything noteworthy offered on the subject this year. It’s a vital 9/11 subject and a case that has to continue to be made.

The school parking lot and the black Honda allegedly driven by Adam Lanza.

By Craig McKee

It’s like a conspiracy theory on steroids.

Everything about the Sandy Hook shooting is more emotional, more perplexing, and more polarizing than any single “conspiracy” event in recent memory. Questions, theories, and challenges to what we’ve been told by authorities and the media are coming up faster and more frequently than we’ve seen in just about any other similar circumstance.

Confirmed facts are in short supply while emotion rules the day. Children are involved, so convincing people to question the facts is even more difficult than it would otherwise be. It seems that questioning potential conspiracies is something you can do as long as you keep your doubts in good taste. It’s hard to meet that standard when you’re questioning whether the mass shooting of children was actually a staged event (or at least featured more than one shooter).

Those who are usually allies in the fight for truth are finding themselves strongly disagreeing with each other over whether Sandy Hook was a false flag event or a tragedy perpetrated by one troubled young man. Some feel the holes in the official story are just so numerous that something is definitely up. Others think that 9/11 truthers and other conspiracy researchers are damaging their credibility by challenging the truth of this event. Still others think that only some of the points being made are damaging because they make accusations that are not proven.

There has been so much interest in the subject – and so many questions raised – that the mainstream media has had no choice but to take notice. Predictably, they have been on the attack, ridiculing what has come to be called (unfortunately), the Sandy Hook Truth movement.

So the question then becomes, when it comes to conspiracies, is bad publicity better than no publicity? That’s because the mainstream media is giving the emerging “movement” a lot of very bad publicity in recent days.

They have cherry picked statements from people like by Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy who has questioned whether Sandy Hook happened as reported. Tracy’s comments have received huge media play, and he is now being investigated by the university. We’ll find out if he ends up losing losing his job over this.

If you’d like to support Tracy, I’d suggest you write to FAU provost Dr. Brenda Claiborne and urge her to stand behind him and his right to free speech as I did last Friday. Here is a link offering contact info for Claiborne and other officials: http://www.fau.edu/provost/staff.php. Or you can email her directly at this address: provost@fau.edu Tracy’s essays have been intelligent and thoughtfu,l and he has taken heat simply because he is a professor. We should support him.

The attacks on Tracy have come notably from CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Cooper, of course, focused entirely on the most sensational claims that have been made about the shooting. He made no effort to hide his disgust in his initial report on the subject that focused on Tracy’s remarks. Usually, he explained, CNN wouldn’t dignify such “conspiracy theories” with the network’s valuable air time (I know, it’s hard not to laugh at that), but this was SO OUTRAGEOUS that they made an exception.

But the most chilling part came at the end when he pointed out that Tracy isn’t one of those regular conspiracy theorists (usually we can be found living under rocks you know), he is actually a tenured university professor whose salary is paid BY THE TAXPAYER!

Get it? Freedom of speech is one thing but not if your fellow citizens are helping you pay your rent and not if you’re teaching impressionable young people. Cooper, who is now giving Piers Morgan a run for his money as the most despicable member of the CNN disinfo team, didn’t even pay lip service to looking at the issue fairly. Not to be outdone, RT’s Abby Martin laid into conspiracy theorists for their “fear-mongering paranoia.”  Jesse Ventura has also written an article opposing the idea of Sandy Hook as a false flag.

While Tracy has been taking most of the individual heat, the media and the public have been going after “conspiracy theorists” (we’re all one group, you know – unanimous about everything!) by using the more provocative statements that have been made about Sandy Hook.

In some cases they have taken statements out of context and used them to indict everyone who questions truth of what we’ve been told. Through it all they have steadfastly ignored the fact-based questions, anomalies, and contradictions that have been pointed out about the official version of the event.

Undeterred by the media onslaught, ordinary people with the willingness to ask questions are seeking out information on their own. The YouTube video “Sandy Hook Fully Exposed” has received an incredible 11 million hits in just a few days. Part 2 is now online.

While the media have been vilifying conspiracy theorists, there have been some heated debates among those who agree on false flag operations like 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing. Some have chosen to stick to the hard evidence while others have focused on some of the more disturbing oddities.

Some are horrified by suggestions that parents were actually actors, that a little girl killed in the shooting wasn’t actually dead, and that a man who took surviving children into his home was “in on it.” Others are pushing ahead undeterred, relentlessly pointing out the things in this story that make no sense or that the media has ignored.

When it comes to the mainstream attention to the Sandy Hook researchers, I’m more of a “glass half full” person.

I think those who question the story do have to be responsible in who they accuse and what they suggest. On the other hand, I’m concerned about those who are claiming to “debunk” the event based on speculation and a focus on the most extreme and weak pieces of evidence. I particularly find it odd when 9/11 truth activists do this, since it is a tactic of those who would have us believe that the world is just as we are told it is by the powers that be.

I offered the opinion that father Robbie Parker was putting on an act when he spoke in front of cameras about the shooting. Given that the rest of my previous piece focused on questions about hard evidence, it could be argued (and has been) that I should not have made this statement, which was purely an opinion. This may well be the case, but my opinion about Mr. Parker’s appearance has not changed.

Having said that I do think we have to keep our focus on facts although when it comes to what the media will report, I’m not sure it matters that much. They’ll find things to ridicule if they want to, even if 99% of commentary about the shooting sticks to well-argued arguments about hard evidence. Without professors making controversial statements, would the media even bother to cover challenges to the official Sandy Hook story?

One member of the 911 Truth movement has been trying to make the case that all the anomalies of Sandy Hook can be explained and that there is zero evidence of any conspiracy. Jeff Prager, who is also on record as believing 9/11 to be a nuclear event, offered explanations for a number of contentious points on the Kevin Barrett radio show recently.

But while Prager says he examined vast amounts of media coverage for several days following the shooting to determine what was reported when, his explanations leave something to be desired. For example, his explanation for why Sandy Hook school nurse Sally Cox claimed to have known Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, stating that she was an experienced kindergarten teacher (early reports that she was a teacher at Sandy Hook proved to be false): “She’s a flippin’ loon.”

The fact that Cox apparently claimed to have known Nancy Lanza deserves more examination than just calling her a name. Prager also suggested that unidentified individuals who were taken into custody could just have been innocently walking around.

If Prager’s intent is to caution us against jumping to conclusions and not doing our homework, then I applaud it. But from what I heard, he is just coming up with possible explanations for the anomalies and catching some false statements and claims. But just because some claims are sloppy and false does not mean that there aren’t many other points that merit suspicion.

Police video shows two guns in trunk

It seems that every day a new piece of evidence comes to light that can’t be explained by the official story. Because of the proliferation of questions about the firearms found at the scene that day by police, a decision was made last week to clarify which weapons were found. But instead of clearing up the confusion, they’ve added to the mystery.

According to a press release from the Connecticut State Police from last Friday:

“Seized inside the school were the following: a Bushmaster .223 caliber– model XM15-E2S rifle with high capacity 30 round clips; a Glock 10 mm handgun; and a Sig-Sauer P226 9mm handgun. Seized from the suspect’s car in parking lot was a Izhmash Canta-12 12 gauge Shotgun.”

The problem is that this appears to be contradicted by the police’s own video, shot the night of the shooting. The video (an extended version of what a lot of people have already seen) clearly shows two crime scene investigators in white suits walking away from the car alleged to have been driven by shooting suspect Adam Lanza, each carrying long guns. Unless one of these guns was the same one allegedly found inside the school, which has been taken from inside the school to the parking lot, then we have a problem.

Unless the Bushmaster was moved from where it was found inside the school and taken to where the trunk of the car was being searched (I’m not sure why they would do that), then how can police account for the second gun found being carried away from the car on the night of Dec. 14? Could it be that earlier reports that only handguns were found inside the school were correct? And could one of the two guns being carried from the car have been the Bushmaster?

If the latter is true, then how can we account for the claim of chief medical examiner H. Wayne Carver that all those killed were shot with the rifle? And then there is the claim that the school was littered with spent .223 shells.

It’s interesting that shortly after the shooting, Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance threatened to arrest and prosecut people who distribute false information on the Internet about the Sandy Hook event.

If that’s not the definition of irony, I don’t know what is.

It’s ironic because the false information associated with Sandy Hook has come primarily from the mainstream media along with federal and state officials and unnamed “law enforcement” sources. I wonder if any of those will be prosecuted by Lt. Vance and his crack team.

The sheer number of false reports we’ve seen in this case is cause enough for suspicion. Most chalk it up to confusion, but those who are content with this explanation have likely never worked as reporters. Yes, a journalist at the scene of a disaster might be interviewing regular citizens who say conflicting things, but it’s simply not normal that media would publish dozens of false reports from unnamed law enforcement sources.

Just on the subject of guns we heard reports that the rifle was found in the trunk of the car and two handguns were found with the alleged gunman. Later, NBC told us that this was wrong and that there were FOUR handguns found inside the school and ONLY handguns. But that didn’t quite fit with the claim that the victims were killed with a rifle or that spent .223 shells were found all over the school, so it changed again.

Then, of course, we have the growing number of Sandy Hook fundraising web pages, Facebook pages, blogs, and even obituaries that are dated BEFORE the shooting. That subject deserves a lot more attention. Yes, some have come up with possible explanations for some one of these – but all six? The odds that they are all computer glitches are astronomical.

So we have a shooting with facts that don’t add up. We have conspiracy researchers telling us there is no conspiracy. And we have more and more questions being asked and more and more anomalies being uncovered every day.

We largely missed the boat on the utterly bogus “lone gunman” Aurora shooting; let’s not let that happen this time.

Robbie Parker smiles right before getting into character at briefing.

By Craig McKee

It’s a story we’ve been fed before.

A horrific and violent mass shooting takes place. Innocent people die, a community mourns, and the world feels even less safe than before. People struggle to make sense of what appears to be a random event, the work of a disturbed lone killer.

The mainstream media present us with a narrative that leans heavily on emotion and the need for “healing.” In the early going, facts that don’t fit this story may be floating around, but they are soon trimmed as if they never existed. And once the narrative is set, it almost certainly stays that way.

Whether it’s bogus “terrorist attacks” like 9/11 or mass killings pinned on “lone gunmen” like we just saw at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the mainstream media fail to – or refuse to – point out the gaping holes in the official story. Often, they appear to be actively covering them up.

It’s not only that critical questions aren’t answered, it’s that they aren’t even asked.

If you go to the home page of the Newtown Bee, you’ll see a long list of stories about the shooting in which 20 children and six adults were allegedly shot to death (plus alleged shooter Adam Lanza and his mother, Nancy Lanza). How many of these focus on actual evidence? Zero. Most are about how the families are coping, how the community is healing, and the role of guns in the tragedy. Heavy on emotion, light on questions.

The more we learn about the Sandy Hook shooting, the more the official account falls apart. For example, how is it possible that two weeks after the incident we still don’t know conclusively which weapons were used or even how many weapons were found at the scene and where?

We were told that two handguns, a Glock and a SIG SAUER, were found with Adam Lanza’s body. We were told that he killed his victims with a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle and that many shell casings from this gun were found on the floor in the school. We were also told during the day that police had found the Bushmaster in the trunk of Lanza’s black Honda. Obviously, he couldn’t have put the gun back in the trunk and then returned to the school to kill himself.

NBC News later reported that four, not two, handguns were found inside the school and no rifles. But chief medical examiner H. Wayne Carver told reporters that that the wounds he saw on the dead children were from a rifle not a handgun.

Then, another long gun is found in the trunk of a car purported to have been driven to the scene by Adam – but the discovery is made (or perhaps recreated?) after dark. Does this mean it’s not the same one they found earlier in the day? This is shown in police video. Rather than preserving the gun as it was found, the officer clears a cartridge from the chamber and handles the gun as if he is not the least bit worried about compromising valuable evidence.

How could there be such confusion about basic facts if only one shooter was involved? But if multiple shooters were involved, and a cover-up fully underway, things make more sense.

We also hear on the police scanner that the car is actually registered to Norwalk, CT native and alleged petty criminal Christopher Rodia and not to anyone in the Lanza family. Why are we not hearing about this? Who is Rodia, and what is his connection to Lanza? The subject is discussed here.

Then there is substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau’s car in the Sandy Hook parking lot being “riddled with bullets” as reported by the New York Daily News.

How does this fit into the official scenario, exactly? And why don’t journalists see the importance of a fact like this?

Police scanner recordings indicate that both a rifle and a shotgun were seen as police chased possible suspects. This would mean guns other than the one(s) found in the trunk, or trunks. So that means four long guns or more? Plus the four handguns? So how many guns were there all together?

And why haven’t we heard about other suspects being arrested, which they clearly were? On the police scanner recordings we hear:

“I have reports that teachers saw two shadows running past the building, past the gym.”

Then another voice: “Ya, we got ‘em. They’re coming at me.” inaudible “they’re coming down the driveway, left side.” Another voice: inaudible “… this is it.” We then hear that the police have one or more suspects “proned out.”

Then, several minutes later: “Be advised. We do have multiple weapons, including a rifle and a shotgun.”

So we clearly have a major story waiting to be revealed by the media: multiple suspects, multiple guns, and the portrait of Adam Lanza as a disturbed lone gunman now in serious doubt.

Another video clearly shows a man being chased into the woods and apprehended. According to one witness, the suspect was then brought out of the woods and placed in a police car. Who is this guy, and what led police to arrest him? Was he released? Why aren’t the media asking about him?

One very articulate young student explained on camera how another person was on the ground and handcuffed near the fire station, a short distance from the school. Is this a possible third shooter? Another student reported hearing someone inside the school telling someone to else put their hands up with the other voice saying, “Don’t shoot.” Would Adam Lanza tell anyone to put their hands up if he were in the middle of a killing rampage? Or was one of shooters being told to put his hands up by police?

Then there is the profusion of false reports that originated with unnamed “law enforcement” sources. How did unnamed sources lead media to conclude that Ryan Lanza was actually the shooter? Or that both Ryan and Adam were both shooters and that one had been taken into custody? We are told that Adam had his brother’s ID, and yet Ryan says he had not seen Adam since 2010. And how could that ID lead anyone to conclude that both Ryan and Adam were shooters together?

All of this was present in an Associated Press story.  The unnamed source got a whole lot wrong. In addition to all the above, the article tells us that Ryan Lanza’s girlfriend and another friend were missing the day of the shooting. How could anyone say that anyone was “missing” just a few hours after the shooting? Who said they were missing? Were the activities of the Lanza family being monitored before the shooting?

In his essay “Sandy Hook – Evidence of Foreknowledge,”  in Veteran’s Today, Niall Bradley makes a very significant point: how did any law enforcement official even know that Ryan had a younger brother so early in the game, especially given that no public records of Adam Lanza appears to exist after 2009?

Why were we told that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school and that she had been among the dead at the scene? When school teachers and officials denied knowing her, the tale was amended to suggest that Lanza might have been a substitute teacher and later a volunteer, explaining why she was not known to other teachers. Where would this come from given that none of it is true? We now know that she had no connection to the school, although Adam apparently did attend the school briefly, ending in 2002.

We even heard at one point that Adam’s father, Peter Lanza, had been killed.

Yes, confusion is natural and expected in these types of disasters – to a point. But some of the false reports don’t make sense. Do law enforcement sources generally throw out unconfirmed bits of information and rumours to journalists? It’s almost as if all these “errors” were thrown into the mix on purpose to camouflage other anomalies and gaps in the story.

That’s another thing: Lanza had killed himself (allegedly) before police arrived. That’s quite a trick given that police spokesman Lt. J Paul Vance reported that they arrived on scene almost immediately. Lanza had time to shoot 26 people and turn the gun on himself within a couple of minutes, leaving just two adults wounded?

As with the Aurora shooting in July, the gunman in Newtown went to the trouble of wearing a bulletproof vest and hiding his face, which should set off very loud alarm bells. We just have to take the authorities’ word for it that Lanza shot anyone, just like we have to take their word for it that he shot his mother in their home (no one in the media even asks for evidence that he was the shooter there). Is there anyone who can place Adam in the school or are we just going on the presence of his dead body as described by authorities?

Just as we saw with the Aurora shooting, the alleged shooter is labelled as the gunman in most media reports (sometimes a crazed gunman). It’s really disgusting how major media don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling him “the killer” and saying he shot his mother and 26 more people at the school. No one seems to care about proof or the presumption of innocence anymore.

Then we started hearing from the parents, and that’s when things got really bizarre. The award for worst supporting actor in a false flag operation has to go to Robbie Parker, the father of one of the children who was apparently shot that day. A smiling Parker had to visibly work himself into character at a press conference. He began breathing deeply in preparation for being “choked up” about the loss of his daughter. His acting teacher must have recommended deep breaths between words to convey emotional devastation.

And there are other interviews that are almost as suspicious. The McDonnell family talk about their daughter Grace as if she died years ago, and they’re looking back fondly. No tears. In fact, we haven’t seen any tears from any parents in TV interviews. Then there is Gene Rosen, the local resident who tells a story about children and a teacher showing up on his lawn after the shooting, and him inviting them in and giving them some of his grandson’s stuffed animals. In numerous interviews Rosen loses his composure but never sheds an actual tear.

Then there’s this really bizarre item: a memorial Facebook page for victim Victoria Soto was created four days BEFORE the shooting. I’m open to any and all theories about this. The page was apparently taken down but can be viewed on this video.  There are several other pages called RIP Victoria Soto that can be found – all created after Dec. 14.

Another essay on the shooting that’s worth reading is by James F. Tracy  on globalresearch.ca called “Sandy Hook massare: Unanswered questions and missing information.” He  looks at whether things we saw at Sandy Hook fit with what we’d expect to see with an event like this:

“Nor are there any routine eyewitness, photo or video evidence of the crime scene’s aftermath—broken glass, blasted security locks and doors, bullet casings and holes, bloodied walls and floors—all of which are common in such investigations and reportage.”

Are we going to see security footage of the shooting rampage or will we see a replay of the government’s refusal to release footage of Flight 77 as it allegedly hit the Pentagon on 9/11? If we do see footage from Sandy Hook, will it confirm the identity of the shooter? Almost certainly not. Once again, they’ll just want us to take their word for it.

So much of this story feels suspiciously similar to the Aurora theatre shooting in July. In both cases we have a young man with no history of violence disguising himself in protective gear, including a mask and bulletproof vest, and shooting a bunch of people in a public place. Both appear to have been found at the respective scenes (Holmes alive and meekly sitting in his car and Lanza apparently dead by his own hand). But there is no one (yet) who can positively say they saw either man fire a shot.

It is possible that Adam Lanza did fire shots, but almost certainly not acting alone. I’m inclined to doubt that he shot anyone, just as I don’t believe James Holmes shot anyone. I think they were both patsies and guilty of coming to the attention of the wrong people at the wrong time.

I’ll conclude with a trip even further down the rabbit hole:

The Aurora shooting took place during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. In a trailer for Skyfall that played before the film, we see a view of the cityscape in Shanghai with the word “Aurora” shining in giant red letters atop one of the largest buildings (Aurora was the Roman goddess of the morning).

Coincidence, you’re thinking. Fine. In the scene when (spoiler alert!) explosives destroy a football field in the middle of play, the player who runs the length of the field with the ball – unaware of how close he has come to death until he turns around – wears jersey number 86. In 1986, a comic called Batman: The Dark Knight Returns contained a scene where a gunman enters a movie theatre and opens fire on innocent moviegoers. In the comic, the person accused of the crime (Batman) is innocent.

But I’ve saved the best for last: In a shot in The Dark Knight Rises, a map of Gotham City is spread out on a table. You can only read two locations on the map, even when the image is considerably enlarged. One is the label indicating that the map is of Gotham City, and the other is Sandy Hook. Not only can we read “Sandy Hook” on the map clearly, but Commissioner Gordon points right to the name as he is talking. Another version of the map that was used for promotional purposes shows it even more clearly. Sandy Hook is labelled on the map as “strike zone 1.”

Heckuva coincidence, isn’t it?

By Craig McKee

There is a reason why so many conspiracy “enthusiasts” connect with the concept behind The Matrix.

It shows us a world that most accept as being real. People have jobs, have friends, have lives, and they don’t ask questions. But Thomas Anderson/Neo has a different future ahead of him. We follow him as he takes the red pill, and we all find out “just how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

I’m currently reading a provocative new book that looks at 9/11 from a vantage point in the deepest recesses of the rabbit hole. The book is called The Most Dangerous Book in the World: 9/11 as Mass Ritual by S.K. Bain. I’ve got an interview lined up with the author as soon as I have finished; reading the book.

But in the meantime, I was particularly struck by the prologue of the book, entitled “Knock, knock” and written by Peter Levenda, author of Sinister Forces. Levenda offers more than just an introduction to Bain’s book, which contends that 9/11 was an elaborate occult ritual, he offers an insightful description of what it means to be a “conspiracy theorist” and what it means to be, well, everybody else.

With Bain’s kind permission, I am reproducing a major chunk of Levenda’s prologue below, leaving out the parts that deal directly with the book he is introducing (we’ll get to that in the interview piece). Levenda looks at how the majority of us live in a reality that has been constructed for us while those who are fascinated by secrets and conspiracies are determined to look at and understand the “darker mechanisms of reality.”

I am very conscious of the transition process from a state of accepting the surface reality we’re presented with to one of wanting to understand – and expose – the hidden and insidious manipulations of our world for the benefit of a few. Although I’ve always felt unsatisfied with the reality presented to us (I began obsessing about the Kennedy assassination in my early teens), that feeling has been brought to a new level since I got involved in the 9/11 Truth movement. Frankly, some of my long-time friends think I’ve gone off the deep end, seeing conspiracies everywhere. I, on the other hand, am increasingly frustrated at their resistance and denial of what I am now just starting to see.

As with Neo, there’s no going back for me. Once you’ve become a pickle, you can’t go back to being a cucumber. Perhaps, Mr. Levenda can put it better as he looks at what it means to be a conspiracy theorist:

 “They have one foot in the world of mainstream history and culture, what Robert Anton Wilson used to call “consensus reality.” That’s the world where most of us live. We are all products of that world, and of the ideas and worldview it represents. We are trained in this world virtually from birth: school, church, government, media all conspire to present an image—a picture—of reality that will result in the development of perfect citizens in an easily-managed society. There is a social contract: we contribute to this society with the expectation that we will receive goods and services in return. We obey the laws that are created by other people, believing that our best interests are being addressed thereby. We fight in wars declared by our governments in order to preserve our society: this carefully-structured, albeit artificial, society.

And all is right with the world.

 But conspiracy theorists have their other foot … well, somewhere else. Not everyone is asleep to the darker mechanisms of reality. In fact, everyone becomes aware of them at some point in their lives. Everyone questions. The very nature of reality itself is at times so hostile to human life that human institutions must be challenged for their inadequate protection of their constituents. Conspiracy theorists seize on this inadequacy as evidence of the tenuousness of consensus reality. There are other forces at work, forces that are unacknowledged by the state, the church, the media because to admit their existence is to admit failure. Thus, when things go wrong, terrorists are blamed, or communists, or witches. This serves to rally the citizens around the government once again, instead of stopping to insist that explanations be given, that evidence is properly analyzed, that the guilty are apprehended and punished. And we once more go to war, against … someone, somewhere.

Paranoia becomes institutionalized. It is appropriated by the government as its own prerogative. The state determines the nature and quality of the paranoia: it creates intelligence agencies whose sole purpose is to give a form to paranoia, to enshrine paranoia as one of the necessary qualities of an observant and caring state. To prove that paranoia is an acceptable characteristic of the paternalistic regime.

The citizens are not allowed to become paranoid unless it is at government direction and sanction. Individual cases of paranoia are frowned upon. The state tells us that if we are not paranoid the way it is paranoid—and about the same things—it’s because we don’t have all the facts: about terrorism, fundamentalism, communism, foreign countries, weapons of mass destruction, sleeper cells. The state has all the facts: classified documents, wire-tap transcripts, intelligence feeds, high-altitude reconnaissance images, none of which the citizen is permitted to see.

It does not realize that the logical conclusion of all this paranoia is suspicion of the state apparatus itself.

What the conspiracy theorist often fails to realize, however, is that those working for the state are often just as clueless as the average citizen when it comes to the origin and function of the forces at work to subvert it. The strength of a conspiracy, after all, rests in the limited number of persons who are aware of its existence and parameters. No one has the entire picture. Each member of the state apparatus only has possession of a single piece of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. Putting together all these disparate pieces—particularly when one does not have the original picture to work from—is a soul-destroying enterprise that consumes decades of work and years of one’s life. This is especially true when the state has in its arsenal of lies the techniques of disinformation and misdirection, of false testimony and planted documents. 

Anyone who works with this material eventually comes to that realization. But the motivation to keep digging is still alive; the urge to uncover one more piece of the puzzle, one more document, is perhaps a central characteristic not only of the conspiracy theorist but of human nature itself. The more intelligent of the theorists soon come to realize that Hansel and Gretel have left breadcrumbs everywhere, in no discernible pattern. Thus, the inclination among some of the best to stop looking for the children and start looking for the Witch.

The deeper one delves into the conspiracy literature, the more one is struck by the tendency of some theorists to look beyond the documents and the tangible evidence of government malfeasance or political conspiracy to more transcendental sources of power. One begins with the government agents, the spies, the politicians, the military, and soon gravitates towards the secret societies: the Freemasons and the Illuminati (among so many others). This involves studying their texts, their social structures, their stated goals, their secret conclaves, their antinomian beliefs and practices.”

And that’s where Bain’s book comes in – a rabbit hole exploration for another day.

By Barrie Zwicker (Special to Truth and Shadows)

As we have almost every year for many years, my wife and I this past November 11^th attended the Remembrance Day commemoration at Toronto’s Old City Hall. We’ve seen the crowds grow ever larger

This year we and our daughter had to leave our homes more than an hour and a half before the eleventh hour in order to secure what would have been a good view, had not a solid bank of camerapersons’ backsides all but obstructed it.

Our main reason for joining the commemoration is that Jeanie’s father, Charles, who volunteered and served in the Canadian Army in the Second World War, was killed in the final days of the war in Holland. The reverberations from his death continue, as do the family reverberations for all those killed and maimed in all wars. Jeanie grew up fatherless. There’s a book right there.

My father, Rev. Grenfell (“Gren”) Zwicker, also volunteered and served in the Second World War, as a padre. He was honourably discharged with the rank of Squadron Leader a short time after Charlie’s body was interred in the Canadian War Cemetery at Groesbeek outside Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands. It celebrated its 2000^th year in 2005.

Nijmegen also was the first in the Netherlands to fall to the Nazis in the Second World War. Although 2,338 Canadian soldiers are interred near Nijmegen, it is not twinned with any Canadian city, yet it is twinned with cities in Turkey, Russia, Nicaragua, the U.S.A., China and Japan.

From my Dad’s service there also are some family reverberations, but mainly reverberations of a different kind.

Charlie was a farmer and a square dance caller. We don’t know what his politics were. My father’s politics all his life, from the time he was a student during the Great Depression, were left-leaning. He was not a pure pacifist, obviously. But he would not have objected if told his epitaph were to read: “He was obsessed with the cause of world peace.”

So in 1946, when I was 12, my introduction to Remembrance Day was nuanced, as today’s terminology would have it. This was in Swan River, Manitoba, where my father was the United Church minister in his first postwar parish. As such he was one of the town clergy to deliver prayers on the Remembrance Day.

These prayers, and what he shared with us at the time he was composing them, were as important an education as anything I was learning in public school in Grade 8.

Most of the other clergy, and the general tenor of the arrangements led by the Royal Canadian Legion, emphasized the valiant patriotism of those who “paid the ultimate sacrifice.” My father’s prayers emphasized applying the lessons of war to the goal of peace and his deep belief that the most meaningful way to honour the fallen is to bend our energies toward preventing more wars.

His prayers, obviously, were not answered, whereas those of most of the other clergy (occasionally Dad would be joined in his emphasis by a progressive Anglican) were. It was not that the other clergy prayed for war. It was just that they did not question the roots of war nor did they call for a vision of peace, let alone for the deep study and difficult prolonged actions needed to make that vision a reality.

As my life unfolded I paid more, or less, attention on various Remembrance Days. But I noticed that the conflict of values embedded in those early ceremonies continued through the Korean War (the establishment attempted to mask the brutal nature of that war and its hidden history by calling it only “a conflict”).

Then through the Cold War, when the alleged adherence to Christianity and allegedly spotless democracy of “the West” were presented as being under mortal threat by “Godless communism.” This was as neat a setup for simplistic global hatreds as the Devil himself could wish.

Then, as the illegal “Western” invasions of first Afghanistan and then Iraq – based on a big lie about “the war on terror” — blighted history’s landscape, Remembrance Day prayers continued to invoke reverence for “our heroes” in Afghanistan and the naming on August 24^th, 2007 of a portion of Highway 401 as “the Highway of Heroes.”

Basically these young Canadian men and women, who undoubtedly very often perform heroically, were sent to kill and maim, as they always are. Not only that, but the last thing you’ll hear on Remembrance Day, or any other day, is that the war on Afghanistan undoubtedly was and remains illegal.

Consider: On October 2^nd, 2001, the US representative to NATO allegedly provided evidence to a closed-door meeting of the NATO Council that Osama bin Laden and “his al Qaeda network, operating out of Afghanistan” had perpetrated the crimes of 9/11. [1]

NATO secretary-general Lord Robertson assured the world of this in a press release that day. The alleged evidence, however, has not been made public to this day, despite promises by the U.S.A. that it would be. Yet on this frail — really non-existent — basis NATO decided for the first time to invoke 5 of the NATO Charter. [2]

Canada is a NATO country. On October 3^rd, 2001, Alexa McDonough, at the time leader of the federal New Democratic Party, rose in the House of Commons asking that the Canadian government make public the proof allegedly supplied by the U.S. government of bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11.

The proof was not forthcoming then, nor has it been to the present time (as was also the case when these facts were published in my 2007 book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11). [3]

This is just some of the background as I understood it that bubbled up in my mind this past November 11th, as I watched the fly-past of four Harvard trainers, their sound so familiar to me from my childhood.

I respect the many backgrounds and viewpoints that all those attending these ceremonies bring to them. For my background I followed in my father’s footsteps in trying to be a promoter of peace. I joined him, for instance, in being active in the Cruise Missile Conversion Project.

A lasting memory of my father is how big the smile on his face was as police officers carried him off to the paddy wagon during a demonstration at the Litton Industries plant in Rexdale, where the “brains” of the new cruise missiles were manufactured. The damage we demonstrators inflicted to the factory was restricted to trampling a few flowers. Dad was soon released without charge. (An avid gardener, he might have pleaded guilty and offered to pay a fine, had he been charged with “wanton flower destruction” but the authorities passed up the chance to test this theory.)

For the likes of my father and me, it was not surprising that the role of the Royal Canadian Legion grew, over the years, increasingly objectionable. The instance that really got up my nose was the year the Legion, or someone in it, flexed their muscles to deny, for a time, the organization Veterans Against Nuclear Arms (VANA) a place in what’s called the Warriors’ Day parade in Toronto.

Held in August, that parade, as you’ll find on its website “is the longest running veterans parade in the free world and has been a part of the [Canadian National Exhibition] since 1921.”

That anyone connected with such an event, that eulogizes the defence of democracy, would do anything to diminish the right of free assembly, so integral to any meaningful democracy, I found mind-boggling. After that I never bought a poppy.

The group of bona fide veterans that established VANA included medal-wearing heroes.

For instance the late C. G. (“Giff”) Gifford was its founder. In 1982 he mobilized a group of veterans in Nova Scotia to speak out against Canadian complicity in the growing insanity of the nuclear arms race. VANA grew to a membership of more than 800 vets.

Giff joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. He survived 49 bombing raids over Europe as a Pathfinder navigator and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He participated in the February 13, 1945 raid in Dresden, which resulted in 35,000 deaths on a city jammed with refugees.

He was a warrior in the conventional sense and he was also a warrior for peace – really, for sanity.

The difference between the members of VANA and the broad membership of the Legion was that VANA veterans actually wanted to do something to try to prevent future wars, rather than protect their versions of what happened in various wars, and pay lip service to worn out generalities. VANA’s members knew the destruction of life and property in a nuclear war would surpass that of all the wars in past history combined. They knew, because they went out of their way to inform themselves. They knew it would be so much more destructive than past wars that the word “war” wouldn’t cut it.  “Genocide” would, certainly, or “ecocide,” or as the British historian E. P. Thompson suggested, “extermination.”

One supporter of VANA is my friend Phyllis Creighton, an Anglican, member of the Global Issues Project and of The Raging Grannies. In a piece she just wrote entitled “Remembrance” for The Herald, a quarterly published by her Toronto church, Christ Church Deer Park, she writes:

“Like most Canadians, I supported World War II as a necessary and just war against Nazi and later Japanese aggression. But in the blinding light of the nuclear bombs dropped by the U.S.on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, I saw a new truth. With the raining down of this utterly evil indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction on civilian non-combatants, ‘just war’ became history. The present U.S. use of drones for assassination at will confirms the lawless immorality of armed violence and the looming future of death by disassociated computer.”

Occasionally as Remembrance Day approached and fresh-faced young members of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets were out selling poppies, I would gently share with one of them why I was declining to buy. (I had been a member of the Air Cadets in Swan River, rising to the rank of Flight Sergeant.) I’d tell the uncomprehending young person that unfortunately the proceeds from the poppy sales contributed more to a war mentality than a peace mentality. Even as I did so, I half understood that essentially what I was doing was apologizing to myself that I was not doing enough to abolish war and promote peace.

In 2010 there was a change. My wife and I were gratified to the extent of surprise to hear the Remembrance Day remarks of then Toronto Mayor David Miller, his last before he left office. They were closer to what my father would have delivered than I’d heard before in a Remembrance Day speech.

In researching for this piece I called Toronto City Hall in search of the text of Mayor Miller’s speech. A protocol officer at first told me she was not sure if she could find Mayor Miller’s words as delivered. She might be able to find the prepared text, she said, “but Mayor Miller always spoke from the heart.” As it happened, the National Post of all places, published the transcript of the speech as delivered.

“It is with mixed emotions I address this gathering for the last time,” he began. I remember thinking that was a promising start.

“November 11^th serves as a painful and tragic reminder,” he continued, “that despite the hope that the carnage of World War 1 would make it the ‘war to end all war,’ we are still a long way away from achieving the lasting peace that was perhaps naively envisioned but that we nevertheless still desire.”

He acknowledged “the emotional damage that combat deaths inflict on friends, families and loved ones.” That surely resonated with most present as much as for my wife and me.

Nor is it enough to fill the void that those departed through war leave, the then-Mayor said. “Today, I’m reminded of the words President Jimmy Carter spoke in 2002 while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. He said…’War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.’”

As I finish writing this on the last day of November I think of the dead children in Gaza. So far there are no dead children in Israel, which shows the disproportionate response of Israel to the wrong and regrettable firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel. But again if one takes the time to look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s clear that Israel has initiated illegal actions – including ever-growing settlements on Palestinians’ seized land – and continues to do so in contravention of international law. Decades of repression are bound to provoke reactions. Some will be stupid and self-defeating. As Noam Chomsky and others have noted, Gaza is the world’s largest outdoor prison.

Mayor Miller continued: “We gather today as we do every year in sadness, in mourning and in the faint hope that next year we will not be remembering any additional casualties of war. Sadly, history teaches us that is not likely to be the case.

“Would that it were otherwise. Would that we could choose the path of peace and embrace it. Would that we were here today celebrating such peace, not resenting war; speaking of life, not death; looking forward with hope, not dread.

“The reality is that the depravity of war continues today.”

He concluded: “Remembrance Day is also a day for us to hope and pray that one day the true peace we all desire will come to pass.”

Mayor Miller’s remarks came to mind at the most recent commemoration especially because the remarks of Rob Ford, Toronto’s current (at least for the time being) mayor, differed as much from the remarks of his predecessor, Mayor Miller, as did my father’s from those of his fellow clergy back in Swan River in 1946.

A comparison of the two speeches is educative. It’s important also to note the larger current Canadian political and cultural context for this comparison. Attitudes toward war and peace have been changed in this country to an extent that alarms or saddens some of us.

These changes, it is widely agreed, are due to the influence and policies of the federal Harper government. Stephen Harper has incrementally (many of us say stealthily) moved the political culture of Canada away from an emphasis on peacekeeping and toward emphasis on the military, meaning a glorification of the military and emphasis on justifications for wars past present, even when the justifications can be shown to be fraudulent and future wars (possibly on Iran) are virtually certain to be based on fraudulence.

It is impossible for me to imagine a military assault on Iran not based on the demonic lie of a false flag operation. My current understanding is that this would likely involve some U.S. warship. The claim, if this happens, will be that Iran (insanely) “fired the first shot.”

Mayor Ford is adamantly a member of Harper’s right wing, law-and-order, no-time-for-“lefties or peaceniks” camp. Mayor Miller was faulted for leaning the other way. Let’s compare their speeches. Words matter.

Mayor Miller’s was 1,151 words in length as delivered. Mayor Ford’s was 443 words as per his text and as delivered.

The word peace did not make it into Mayor Ford’s remarks. The word peacekeeping made it twice as could hardly be avoided in light of the history of our soldiers’ sacrifices while they wore the blue helmets of the United Nations in the Suez, Cyprus, Bosnia, and 31 other missions.

In addition to his use of it twice in peacekeeping, the word peace made it into Mayor Miller’s speech nine times.

The word war was used by Mayor Ford six times. In five instances it was a proper noun (as in “First World War”). In one instance it was as a common noun (“in times of war”).

In sharp philosophical contrast, the word war was used 20 times by Mayor Miller, four times as a proper noun and no fewer than 16 times as a common noun (as in “the depravity of war” and “the destructive hell war brings”).

In the 2012 commemorations it was Toronto Fire Services Padre Dr. Ron N. Nickle who expressed such deep values for us in attendance. Near the beginning the words of his “Prayer of Remembrance” reverberated out to the crowd from the loudspeakers: “We remember that those who died, died too young, because some in positions of power could think of no better way to conduct the business of the world than through armed conflict.”

His prayer continued: “Save us from easy excuses, invented to make us look noble, grand and righteous.”

In a call for under-rated civilian courage, he prayed: “Save us from taking the path of least resistance when what is really called for is determination and fortitude. “

In a call for adherence to true democracy and deep tolerance and humility he prayed: “Keep us from thinking that our way is the only way: be it in politics or religion or life style.”

And in a call to lift our eyes and goals even beyond removing the scourge of war Padre Nickle prayed: “Give us the vision to see that the world is now too dangerous a place for anything but truth; too small for anything but love.”

In the context it was almost an insurrectionist prayer, but for those of us raised in a progressive Christian tradition, one that would find favour with him known as “the Prince of Peace.”

Those who attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies, or partake of them through watching live TV coverage, are encouraged to reflect privately, especially during the two minutes of silence, on the meaning of Remembrance Day.

I’m old enough to remember when “general and complete disarmament” was a stated goal for humanity that many even thought might be achievable. This goal was championed by the leaders of the former Soviet Union. This in turn ensured that it could be – and was –- characterized as nothing more than a Communist trick, a characterization diabolically short-sighted at best, if not blind, and perversely partisan.

The call for general and complete disarmament was as far from a ploy as could be and can be. The people of the U.S.S.R. suffered at least 20-million dead in the Second World War. Their leaders were accurately reflecting what their people were united in not wanting: anything resembling a repeat.

So many Soviet males were slaughtered in that war, taking with them skills such as plumbing, as one example, leading to faulty construction, that “the West” then could smugly hold up the U.S.S.R. to ridicule and of course blame all shortcomings on the Communist system. So much for even a nod to the history of a recent major war.

A question: when was the last time you even encountered the phrase “general and complete disarmament?” Can’t remember? Right. “The West” has dealt a death blow to a legitimate and (perhaps still a barely) achievable and noble dream of humanity and certainly of Jesus Christ, whose name is so freely invoked on occasions such as Remembrance Day.

As far as tricks are concerned, most of those who volunteered for, or were conscripted to fight in most of the wars in history, were tricked. Tricked by those in power to risk or give their lives for the leaders’ dreams of conquest, glory and power – and for the profits of the arms makers and for the careers of the military establishment and its appendages, such as the Royal Canadian Legion, an organization that after a time my father resigned from in a civil protest.

Most of those who died in most of the wars in history did in fact die in vain, contrary to the claims repeated every Remembrance Day. Not only that, but certainly in ignorance.

Example: A reading of veteran New York Times correspondent Charles Higham’s book Trading with the Enemy will acquaint the reader with the plausible observation that the Second World War may have been artificially extended by two years by “the Allies” in order to keep profits flowing to the arms and other corporations such as those in oil and pharmaceuticals that were making out like bandits from the carnage.

For instance, the successful bombing the giant SKF ball bearing plant at Schweinfurt in Germany would have very shortly crippled the Nazi war effort, since, as Higham writes “Tiny ball bearings were essential to the Nazis: The Luftwaffe could not fly without them, the tanks and armoured cars could not roll in their missions of death. ITT’s Focke-Wulfs, Ford’s autos and trucks for the enemy, would have been powerless without them. Indeed World War II could not have been fought without them. Focke-Wulfs used at least four thousand bearings per plane…” 4]

The plant was never successfully bombed. The lone attempt, led by maverick General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold on October 14^th, 1943 ended in disaster with 60 U.S. bombers lost. [5]

“Arnold, writes Higham, “was shocked to discover that news of the supposed bombing had been leaked to the enemy. Arnold told the London News Chronicle on October 19^th ‘I don’t see how they could have prepared the defense unless they had been warned in advance.’” [6]

In Berlin in 2005 I met, just outside the Reichstag, a visiting middle-aged German couple who had lived near the SKF plant all through the war. They insisted that the reason it had never been bombed was because of “our superior anti-aircraft defenses only.” They said they “loved” the Americans, to whom at war’s end they rented their large home for administrative purposes.

It gets worse. American-born William L. Batt, a director of the SKF corporation (along with Hermann Goring’s cousin Hugo von Rosen) got himself appointed vice-chairman of America’s War Production Board, a position he held throughout the war.

Of SKF, Higham writes: “With its 185 sales organizations throughout the world, SKF could have contributed a fine example of Sweden’s economic democracy at work. However SKF was concerned only to make profits, trade on both sides of the fence in wartime, and act as a front for German interests.” [7]. Batt, himself with Nazi sympathies, was in a position to get word to the Germans about the planned raid.

It gets worse yet. Even as Nazi ball bearing production proceeded without pause, American ball bearing production mysteriously declined, leading to a partial crippling of the U.S. war effort.

Higham writes: “Under von Rosen’s leadership and Batt’s trusteeship SKF production in wartime [America] failed to reach even the minimum of American expectations. This fact infuriated [Henry] Morgenthau [secretary of the treasury] who designated the stocky, feisty Canadian-born Lauchlin Currie of the White House Economics Staff to hammer away at the government to stop this outrageous circumstance.” [8]

On April 10^th, 1943, Higham writes, “a loyal and patriotic American, J. S. Tawresey, chief engineer on the SKF board of directors, resigned following a furious quarrel with Batt. He charged that SKF was ‘destructive to the war effort,’ that SKF had failed to meet orders for 150,000 deliveries per month to the all-important Pratt-Whitney fighter airplane engine company, and that Batt was flagrantly working against America despite his WPB role.” [9]

American bombers were falling from the skies because their engines were seizing up from worn out ball bearings.

Six months later General “Hap” Arnold lost his 60 bombers.

TV specials that always air around November 11^th seldom if ever explore such indubitable history. (General Motors and other corporations named in Trading With the Enemy as aiding the Nazi war effort throughout the Second World War never sued Higham or his publisher for any material in the book. His publisher paid one of the lowest premiums ever for libel insurance after the publisher’s lawyers checked out the facts and sources for the facts in Higham’s book.)

Instead, emotional TV specials air around November 11^thsuch as the recent extended interview with Canada’s 2012 Silver Cross mother. These specials serve in large part to harness our emotions in support of the military and by extension military solutions – the ones that the Reverend Dr. Nickle and before him Mayor Miller, dared to question.

Yes, Remembrance Day is devoted to remembering. But to remember we first have to know. We need to take into account The Uses of History, to quote the title of Margaret MacMillan’s 2008 book. In it she writes: “History is about remembering the past but it is also about what we choose to forget.” [10]

Equally on the mark, as Napoleon (not Winston Churchill) wrote: “History is written by the winners.” Whatever is our best grasp of history, it places on our shoulders a responsibility, however unwelcome it may be for the “remembering establishment.” A responsibility, first and foremost, as the Rev. Dr. Nickle’s prayer reminds us, is with courage and dedication to seek truths wherever they may lead us. They may be unpopular. They may be subversive. But, as his prayer so centrally tells us:

“The world is now too dangerous a place for anything but truth; too small for anything but love.” If we seek truths with courage and love, that will oblige us to speak out.

All of us, in my view, are faced with a duty to remember. That starts with the legitimate assumption that goes beyond healthy skepticism. It is that official histories are never to be trusted.

Three days ago an event in Toronto entitled “Memory as Resistance: Grassroots Archives and the Battle of Memory” was sponsored by CONNEXIONS and Beit Zatoun (http://beitzatoun.org/cms/Home.aspx). The latter is a community organization that emphasizes the rights of Palestinians but offers space to all progressive organizations. The open invitation to attend stated: “Mainstream media and institutions of power consign inconvenient histories, struggles and alternative visions to what George Orwell called ‘the memory hole.’ People’s history projects, such as grassroots archives, preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden histories and alternative visions.”

The more I learn the more it seems evident to me that the truths about most crucial events in history (World War Two, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, JFK’s assassination and 9/11 being some examples) are rammed down the memory hole with a vengeance.

These few thoughts still leave me with about two years of contemplation in order to arrive at a better understanding of what Remembrance Day really means – just to me. I hope others will face as much doubt, anguish and inspiration as I do, in pondering the meaning of Remembrance Day.

 ***

1 Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11, New Society Publishers, 2007, page 110

2 Article 5 reads: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary including the use of armed force to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

3 Ibid. page 111

4 Trading With The Enemy: An Expose of The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-49, by Charles Higham, Delacote Press, New York, 1983, page 116

5 Ibid. page 122

6 Ibid. page 122

7 Ibid. page 116

8 Ibid. page 119

9 ibid. page 121

10 The Uses and Abuses of History, by Margaret MacMillan, Penguin, 2008, page 127

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