BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, the official 9/11 story is very very wrong.

(PERMANENT TOP POST)
Please see here for an overview of the 9/11 Frame-Up. Summary: they faked the plane crashes, they faked the videos, and they nuked the towers.

"The powers that be" are very sick, evil creatures.
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Please note that "Anonymous Physicist", who has contributed articles here in the past, is a different person from "Spooked", the owner of this blog. Also please see here for a note regarding the commenting policy on this site.

Gaza Is Still a Nightmare, a Massive Concentration Camp Run by Israel

My last visit to Gaza had been in May 2014, just before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, an assault that resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand Gazans – combatants and civilians – and the destruction of eighteen thousand homes. When I went back less than three years later the changes were evident everywhere. But two things struck me particularly: the now devastating impact of Gaza’s decade-long isolation from the rest of the world, and the sense that an increasing number of people are reaching the limit of what they can endure.

Gaza is in a state of humanitarian shock, due primarily to Israel’s blockade, supported by the US, the EU and Egypt and now entering its 11th year. Historically a place of trade and commerce, Gaza has relatively little production left, and the economy is now largely dependent on consumption. Although a recent easing of Israeli restrictions has led to a slight increase in agricultural exports to the West Bank and Israel – long Gaza’s principal markets – they are not nearly enough to boost its weakened productive sectors. Gaza’s debility, carefully planned and successfully executed, has left almost half the labour force without any means to earn a living. Unemployment – especially youth unemployment – is the defining feature of life. It now hovers around 42 per cent (it has been higher), but for young people (between the ages of 15 and 29) it stands at 60 per cent. Everyone is consumed by the need to find a job or some way of earning money. ‘Salaries control people’s minds,’ one resident said.

 (snip)

‘What do the Israelis want?’ I was asked the question again and again, with each questioner looking at me searchingly, sometimes imploringly, for an answer, for some insight they clearly felt that they didn’t have. Why is Gaza being punished in so heartless a manner, and what does Israel truly hope to gain by it? One well-placed person claimed that ‘50 to 60 per cent of Hamas’ would give up any claim to Jerusalem in return for the Rafah border crossing being opened up again. Israel has exhausted all the ways it has of putting pressure on Gaza. When Gazans were allowed to work in Israel, Israel had leverage: it would seal the borders and extract whatever concessions it sought. Now even that leverage is gone, and all that remains is menace – a policy towards Gaza that emerges not from any sense or logic but from what Ehud Barak once called ‘inertia’. According to an article in Haaretz, Israel’s ‘security cabinet has not held a single meeting on Israeli policy concerning Gaza for the last four years’. At what point does menace stop working as a form of coercion? What will Israel hope to gain from its next attack on Gaza, when people there already speak about entire families being wiped out as a normal topic of conversation?

If the Israelis were thinking clearly, one person said, ‘everyone could benefit. All they must do is give us a window to live a normal life and all these extremist groups would disappear. Hamas would disappear. The community must deal with … these groups, not IDF tanks and planes. Our generation wants to make peace and it is foolish for Israel to refuse. The next generation may not be as willing as we are. Is that what Israel truly wants?’ In the first six months of 2016, the Ministry of the Interior reported that 24,138 babies were born in Gaza, averaging 132 a day. In August 2016 alone, 4961 babies were born, or 160 a day: more than six babies every hour and one baby every nine minutes. The distance between Gaza City and Tel Aviv is 44 miles. ‘What will Israel do when there are five million Palestinians living in Gaza?’

(emphasis added)

 

It's an insane, hopeless and intolerable situation.

Degradation of the Environment is a Result of Deep Government Corruption

Big business pays off government officials, in a myriad of ways, when the government should be in the job of protecting the environment. 

The pattern is the same around the world, and the Trump administration is very corrupt and bought off by the oil, coal and gas lobby.

Trump Tries to Work US House of Representatives to Go Soft on Russia

Putin's puppet did what now?

The White House plans to work with House Republicans on administration-friendly changes to the Senate’s overwhelmingly bipartisan bill that slaps new sanctions on Russia and curbs President Donald Trump’s power to ease penalties against Moscow, according to a senior administration official.

The White House is concerned that the legislation would tie its hands on U.S.-Russia relations, a sentiment publicly expressed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But Senate Democrats fear the White House may go overboard in preserving its power to talk to Russia and seek to defang the sanctions bill — which passed 98-2 on Thursday in one of the year’s most significant displays of bipartisanship.

Russian Hacking of the 2016 Election

It increasingly looks like Russian hackers may have affected actual vote totals.

We are creeping ever closer to actual evidence that there was Russian ratfcking of the vote totals in the last election. Not long ago, people wouldn't even suggest that out loud. We were made vulnerable to something like this because of the interference by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, by the curious goings-on in Ohio in 2004, by a relentless campaign to convince the country of an imaginary epidemic of voter fraud, and by a decade of voter suppression by any means necessary. The Russians wanted to undermine the confidence Americans had in their elections? We made it pretty damn easy to do that.

And of course Trump denies this interference, to levels that may signify obstruction of justice if not covering up  outright collusion.

50th Anniversary of the USS Liberty Attack

In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans, mostly NSA personnel. 

Good article-- it's clear it was intentional on the part of Israel.

Trump Trouble

Number of days served before a reported federal criminal probe of the POTUS for conduct in office:
CLINTON—1,835
NIXON—1,580
TRUMP—145

We have an impeachment bill in the House.


Important to remember that far FAR more than any other major politician, Trump is a fundamentally dishonest and unethical person. 


Josh Marshall--

But even with my own limited reporting, it is quite clear to me that there are numerous people in Trump’s entourage (or ‘crew’, if you will) including Trump himself whose history and ways of doing business would not survive first contact with real legal scrutiny. It sounds like Mueller sees all of that within his purview, in all likelihood because the far-flung business deealings of Trump and his top associates are the membrane across which collusion and quid pro quos could have been conducted.

As I said, a basic perusal of business in the Trump world makes clear that serious legal scrutiny would turn up no end of problems. Just consider what was from a financial perspective, a tiny island in the Trump archipelago of mischief, The Trump Foundation which David Fahrenthold did so much with. Almost every rock Fahrenthold overturned exposed some self-dealing, at least legal violations and often real wrongdoing and as much as anything a wild level of sloppiness and indifference to doing business like even semi-honest people. From one perspective it’s hard to say Trump knowingly broke the law with the Foundation since the whole conduct of the Foundation seemed to be carried on as though none of the relevant laws even existed. Again, the Foundation was just a sideline for Trump. It’s not where he made his big money and ran off from his biggest obligations. That’s how they do business.

If Mueller is taking a serious prosecutor’s lens to Trump’s financial world and the financial worlds of Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and numerous others, there’s going to be a world of hurt for a lot of people. And that is if no meaningful level of 2016 election collusion even happened.

And I don’t think that’s true.

And somewhat predictably, because that's how he rolls, Trump just threw GOP congressmen under the bus over healthcare. 

But it is an odd move for someone who may be facing impeachment soon.

Fucking Afganistan, the Never Ending War

What exactly is the US military doing in Afghanistan?

I’m hardly alone in wondering. The confusion is so widespread that opposition has bled into public indifference. After a decade and a half – six years longer than the US had troops in Vietnam – it’s just something we do. What we are doing and why is another matter. Initially, the invasion had something to do with finding those responsible for 9/11. After that, there was never a clear answer, and so people who care turn to conspiracy theory, and understandably so. Actually, Afghanistan has been on my mind much longer.

I recall when the Soviets were trying to remake the country, and we Cold-War kids reveled in their failure. That they ever attempted such a thing in this vast country of seasoned warriors and fierce tribal loyalty seemed to underscore the bankrupting arrogance of the Soviet regime and the unrealizable delusion of communism.

As a kid, I wondered how the Russian people put up with it, knowing that their own government was sending its citizens to this vast and dangerous country, putting their lives at risk, killing and being killed, for no apparent reason. I recall feeling proud to live a country where the government would not do such a thing. Such naivete.

Today, we mostly try not to think about this war, unless a friend or family member is directly affected by it.

For this reason, it’s a great thing that Netflix’s 100-million subscribers have the opportunity to watch War Machine, a Netflix exclusive written and directed by David Michôd, and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hayes, John Magaro, and Emory Cohen. It is being advertised as a comedy but the reason is unclear. It is not particularly funny, unless you find humor in watching confused human failures unfold under impossible conditions.

It is based on the true story of General Stanley McChrystal, a forgotten figure today but briefly in the news in 2010. A story in Rolling Stone revealed the drunken aimlessness of the forces under his one year of command in Afghanistan. The story was a personal humiliation for him and he retired to teach classes at Yale University and run his own business consulting firm.

I haven't seen the flick, but the blog post does a good job going over it.

War is a racket, and the war on terror is a sick, venal, psychopathic enterprise.

Trump Withdraws from the Paris Climate Accords

A perfect summation from Charlie Pierce:

I didn't think he could top his ghastly American Carnage inaugural address for sheer fact-free and paranoiac mendacity, but he managed to do it on Thursday. By announcing that the United States was withdrawing from the groundbreaking Paris Accords regarding the world climate crisis, the president* wallowed in rank, xenophobic victimhood while basking in the scattered applause of the otherwise unemployable yahoos whose self-respect is sufficiently low that they still work for him. Any doubt that Steve Bannon is running this White House now, either personally or through his finger-puppet, obvious anagram Reince Priebus, now has evaporated. The transformation of the American government into a Breitbart comments thread is complete.

It was appalling. It was condescending. It was awful content delivered by a dolt who wouldn't know the Paris Accords from a baguette without the shoddy talking points that someone put in front of him. (snip)

The least objectionable element of the speech was its utter internal incoherence.

The United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian economic and financial burden the agreement imposes on our country.

Paris was a non-binding and ineffective agreement, but it was "draconian" nonetheless. The economy is booming under his leadership, but the Paris Accord was destroying it at the same time. This was a speech written by a fool, to be delivered by a fool, with the presumption that a great percentage of its target audience is made up of fools.

But the really noxious stuff was the attempt at transforming a worldwide agreement to combat an existential threat to life on this planet into what he stupidly called a scheme to redistribute our wealth to China, as if we're all not going to be buying our solar panels from China for the next 50 years because of this cluck. The really noxious stuff was all that simpering about how the rest of the world is playing us for suckers and laughing at us, as though the rest of the world doesn't think we've lost our mind as a nation simply by electing a vulgar talking yam. The really noxious stuff was all his crocodile tears about the Forgotten People, as though a lot of them are not suffering through drought, or losing their houses to floods and to landslides, about which he and his people care nothing at all. (snip)

It was a speech written by an angry child, to be delivered by an angry child, with the assumption that its targeted audience was made up of angry children, too. And it was of a piece with that lunatic Wall Street Journal op-ed from Tuesday in which H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn pretty much decided that international diplomacy is nothing more than a larger-than-usual barrel of cannibalistic crabs. (snip)

The idea that these people put together a party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the withdrawal of American leadership in the world leads me to believe that they'd host a barbecue to celebrate a public execution. None of that matters. While the president was speaking, as it happens, a huge chunk of Antarctica was preparing to break off. Meanwhile, Wednesday was the first day of hurricane season, and this president*, who cares so much about the duties of his office and the people of this great land, still hasn't bothered to appoint a FEMA director yet. The nonsense he spewed on Thursday doesn't matter, either, even if it continues to gull the suckers out in the sticks. The oceans are not listening to him.

(emphases added)

This "decision" (which thankfully won't matter too much in the grand scheme of fighting climate change, because most of the US is actually committed to reducing carbon emissions) easily moves Trump into the lead for WORST PRESIDENT EVER. It's just a complete bone-headed, petty move, that cedes any moral authority or global leadership by the US. In his few short months as POTUS, Trump has greatly diminished the stature of the US, much more than Bush, and of course, it must make his boss Vladimir Putin very happy.

Billionaire Space Mogul 'Absolutely Convinced' There Are Aliens Already on Earth

A billionaire aerospace entrepreneur who has recently worked with Nasa has said he is 'absolutely convinced' that there are alien visitors living on Earth.

Robert Bigelow, whose company Bigelow Aerospace has built expandable space habitats for the ISS, was speaking in an interview with 60 minutes on Sunday.

The conversation focused on working with Nasa before it shifted to Mr Bigelow's reported obsession with aliens, as the mogul revealed he has invested 'millions' into UFO research.

Asked whether he believed in aliens, Mr Bigelow responded: 'I'm absolutely convinced. That's all there is to it.'

'There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence [on Earth].

'I spent millions and millions and millions - I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject [aliens].'

Mr Bigelow did not specify exactly how much he has spent on this research, and declined to comment on any personal UFO encounters.

Correspondent Lara Logan, who was leading the interview, then asked Mr Bigelow whether he felt it was risky for him to say in public that he believes in aliens.

She asked him whether he worried that people might think he was 'crazy'.

Mr Bigelow responded: 'I don't give a damn. I don't care.'

War Is Still a Racket

The so-called war on terror is, and always was, a scam. Bombing people in Muslim countries was never going to stop terrorism, and has only exacerbated terrorism.

FFS, that is the whole point of 9/11-- faking terrorism to start a major war enterprise.

Why Trump-Russia Matters

Sarah Kendzior:

Though Trump has shifted position on nearly everything, he's never wavered in his devotion to Russia or his praise of Putin, whom he admires as a strongman. Trump praised Putin on American TV in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, and Russian state media similarly praised Trump, befuddling U.S.-Russia experts who wondered why the Kremlin seemed so interested in buttering up the host of The Apprentice.

But the Kremlin's motive for interfering in our election was simple.

They were presented with two candidates: One, Hillary Clinton, was a nemesis of Putin who sought to keep sanctions against Russia and honor U.S. commitments to international bodies like NATO. The other, Donald Trump, was a malleable egomaniac who had been trying to work with Russia for 30 years.

Trump was also an inherently chaotic candidate whose rise could weaken already struggling U.S. institutions. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been tanking economically and losing political influence—weakening the U.S. is a great way for the Kremlin to get back on top.

Like all Trump ventures, the disaster of this Russian interference plays out on many levels via many players. Trump himself may be at the center of the story, but it's his staff (and now his son-in-law) being investigated for potential ties.

Their alleged Russian collusion may have been motivated by money—former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was secretly on the payroll of a Russian billionaire to do work to"benefit the Putin government" back in 2005.

Or they may have been motivated by ideology—Russia is a xenophobic, increasingly white supremacist state with rhetoric that mirrors that of the Republican Party, particularly under Trump.

Either way, what's good for Trump and his inner circle may be good for Russia, and vice-versa—but it's not good for ordinary Americans or Russians.

As a hyper-capitalist, authoritarian state dominated by sleazy oligarchs and corrupt officials, Russia suppresses free speech, independent media, public protests, and brutally persecutes marginalized groups like LGBT citizens, Muslims, and migrant laborers.

When not busy repressing its own people, the Kremlin tries to repress citizens of other states, both militarily (as in Ukraine) and through media manipulation. It is not, in other words, a government whose ideals we want to align with or empower.

That's what's most disconcerting about the Russian interference scandal: It's the possibility that worst elements in each of our governments could collaborate secretly against the welfare of citizens. It's an affront to sovereignty and to humane governance.

As an American, you should care about that.

"Would a spy for Russia be acting any differently?"

Basically, no.

The more help Trump extends to Russia’s interests and the more inexplicable conduct comes to light (e.g., Jared Kushner looking for a Russian-secured channel) the harder it is to believe Trump isn’t, at the very least, a useful idiot.

Months before the revelations over the last two weeks or so, Watts wrote: “Trump’s loose style of alliances and tactical actions make him ideally suited for the “Useful Idiot” scenario of Russian influence as he takes on advisors and positions based on perceived loyalty, yet without a clear understanding of his advisors connections to Russia. Any traditional politician would have sensed the danger implicit in surrounding oneself with people so closely connected to Putin’s intelligence agents.”

By whatever means, Russia has reaped unexpected and unparalleled benefits from Trump’s presidency. One can attribute all these individual actions to luck or coincidence, I suppose.

But Trump has yet to take a single action nor have a single public interchange that harmed Russia’s interests. You’d think by the law of averages he’d once in a while stumble into a position that put him fundamentally at odds with Russia. That, however, has not occurred.

Nor has it been possible for respected advisers to keep him from giving Russians intelligence data, sowing discord with allies and employing his son-in-law, whose contacts with the Russians seem curiouser and curiouser each day.

Corruption on the Grandest Stage

The most plausible ‘bad’ story behind the Trump/Russia mystery has always been some kind of financial preferment to members of the Trump family in exchange for lifting the sanctions put in place after the Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequent low-intensity incursions into eastern Ukraine.

(snip)

But these new reports about Kushner, trying to set up a confidential line of communication hidden from the US government, meeting with a Russian banker whose role has focused on business ventures taken at the behest of the Russian government to pursue state interests starts to look a lot like the worst case scenario.

I think this is pretty clear that this worst case scenario IS happening, it's what the Russian election interference was all about, it's why Trump is pushing a policy which destabilizes the American-European alliance (a policy that fits perfectly with Russia’s key strategic goals).

It's all about granting massive favors to Russia for MONEY.

It is corruption of the highest order.

No American should be okay with this.