TBR News October 5, 2017

Oct 05 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., October 5, 2017: “Because the bulk of the American print media is filled with fake stories, the public turns for its news from Internet sources. They are, in general, free but the danger is that many sites are packed with deliberate lies and obfuscations.

In order to obtain a balanced view of world, and local, events, the wheat must be separated from the chaff.

For example, Russia Today is run by the Russian government.

Nevertheless, its articles are generally quite factual. The choice of the articles, however, is a form of propaganda.

But then the New York Times and the Washington Post are packed with often grotesque misinformation and propaganda.

Reuters, a British site, is the first with important news but it tends to be slanted against the Trump administration.

Such purported news sites like Infowars or Rense are merely sites to entertain and amuse a serious reader.

Interspersed with legitimate and often accurate news, we find YouTube, Facebook and Twitter packed with badly constructed propaganda, mostly by design but often by accident.”

 

Table of Contents

 

  • Could Catalonia make a success of independence?
  • Al-Nusra Front leader in coma after Russian airstrike in Syria – MOD
  • How fake news spread in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting
  • Las Vegas survivors furious as YouTube promotes clips calling shooting a hoax
  • The Campaign To Rein In the Internet
  • Fact and Fiction News Examples

Fact

  • International Israeli Internet Spying & Fraud

Fiction

  • TWA Flight 800

Fact

  • The Facts, not Fictions, concerning the destruction of the World Trade Center

Fiction

  • The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination

 

Could Catalonia make a success of independence?

October 4, 2017

BBC News

Will they or won’t they? The Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has told the BBC the region will declare independence from Spain in a matter of days, following a controversial, illegal independence poll which Spanish police tried to stop. If they did, independence may well be blocked anyway. But supposing the region did secede, would Catalonia be able to stand on its own two feet?

Trappings of statehood

To the casual observer, Catalonia looks like it has already got many of the trappings of a state. Flags. A parliament. The leader, Carles Puigdemont.

The region has its own police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra. It has its own broadcast regulator, and even boasts a series of foreign “missions” – mini embassies that promote trade and investment in Catalonia around the world. Catalonia delivers some public services already – schools and healthcare, for example.

There’d be much more to set up in the event of independence, though. Border control. Customs. Proper international relations. Defence. A central bank. Inland revenue. Air traffic control.

All of these are currently run by Madrid.

But assuming it did create these new institutions – would it be able to pay for them?

Reasons to be cheerful

“Madrid nos roba” is a popular secessionist slogan – “Madrid is robbing us.” The received wisdom is that comparatively wealthy Catalonia pays in more than it gets out of the Spanish state.

Catalonia is certainly rich compared with other parts of Spain. It is home to just 16% of the Spanish population, but 19% of its GDP and more than a quarter of Spain’s foreign exports.

It punches above its weight in terms of tourism too – 18 million of Spain’s 75 million tourists chose Catalonia as their primary destination last year, easily the most visited region.

Tarragona has one of Europe’s largest chemical hubs.

Barcelona is one of the EU’s top 20 ports by weight of goods handled.

About a third of the working population has some form of tertiary education.

It’s also true that Catalans pay more in taxes than is spent on their region.

In 2014, the last year the Spanish government has figures for, Catalans paid nearly €10bn (£8.9bn) more in taxes than reached their region in public spending. Would an independent Catalonia get the difference back?

Some have argued that even if Catalonia gained a tax boost from independence, that might get swallowed up by having to create new public institutions and run them without the same economies of scale.

And some argue that it makes sense for the state to redistribute money from richer to poorer regions in this way.

A harder reckoning

Perhaps of greater concern is Catalonia’s public debt.

The Catalan government owes €77bn (£68bn) at the last count, or 35.4% of Catalonia’s GDP. Of that, €52bn is owed to the Spanish government.

In 2012, the Spanish government set up a special fund to provide cash to the regions, who were unable to borrow money on the international markets after the financial crisis. Catalonia has been by far the biggest beneficiary of this scheme, taking €67bn since it began.

Not only would Catalonia lose access to that scheme, but it would raise the question of how much debt Catalonia would be willing to repay after independence.

That question would surely cast a shadow over any negotiations. And on top of the sum owed by the regional government – would Madrid expect Barcelona to shoulder a share of the Spanish national debt?

Involuntary Catalexit?

Why would independence negotiations matter?

Never mind the mess of disentangling Catalonia’s economy from Spain’s. Catalonia’s economic power could also depend on whether it continues to be part of the EU – or at least the single market.

Two-thirds of Catalonia’s foreign exports go to the EU. It would need to reapply to become a member if it seceded from Spain – it wouldn’t get in automatically or immediately.

And it would require all EU members to agree – including Spain.

Some in the pro-independence camp feel that Catalonia could settle for a Norwegian-style solution. Single market membership without joining the EU. Catalans may well be happy to pay for access, and continue to accept free movement of EU citizens across the region’s borders.

But if Spain chose to, it could make life difficult for an independent Catalonia.

 

Al-Nusra Front leader in coma after Russian airstrike in Syria – MOD

October 5, 2017

RT

Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of Al-Nusra Front, has fallen into a coma following a Russian surgical strike on the terrorist group’s top commanders in Syria’s Idlib province, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Earlier, the ministry said the terrorist leader was critically injured in the strike on October 3.

The bombing, which led to Al-Julani’s injuries, caused chaos among Tahrir al-Sham members, according to the Russian military. After the field commanders of the “eastern sector” of Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra Front) in Idlib province gathered to work out further plans, the Su-34 precision airstrike killed 49 militants, including seven leaders.

The jet also destroyed the terrorist group’s “largest underground ammunition depot” near the town of Abu ad-Duhur, accommodating “over 1,000 tons of artillery shells and multiple launch rockets.”

The Russian Air Force previously targeted Tahrir al-Sham’s top military leadership after the terrorist group attempted on September 18 to encircle and capture a Russian military police unit deployed to observe the ceasefire in various parts of Hama province.

Among the commanders killed in the airstrike were Tahrir al-Sham’s ‘finance emir,’ a chief of Idlib’s southern sector, an adviser to the ‘war minister,’ a Sharia judge, and an aide to a spiritual leader, the military said at the time.

The airstrike also destroyed a nearby “ammunition and explosives depot and six SUVs with large-caliber weapons,” Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the defense ministry, said.

The defense ministry said that an offensive launched by Al-Nusra Front terrorists and their allies to capture a unit of the Russian military police was orchestrated by the US security services.

Just four days later, the Russian MoD released aerial intelligence which they say shows US Army Special Forces equipment in an Islamic State-held (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) area north of the city of Deir ez-Zor. The US, however, denied having any links to IS.

The Russian military estimates that 90 percent of the country is now cleared from terrorist groups, Andrey Novikov, head of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Anti-terrorism Center, told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

 

How fake news spread in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting

Soon after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, conspiracy theories began circulating online that spread much faster than legitimate news reports. The business of fake news appears to be booming.

October 4, 2017

by Julia Vergin

DW

At least 59 people were killed and over 500 injured during the Mandalay Bay shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, killed himself. According to officials, his motive is still unclear. Around the same time the news of killing spree broke, rumors and false stories began gaining traction online. These stories were clicked four times more often than fact-based reports by reputable media outlets. But why? Who actually benefits from this deluge of fake news and why does it spread so quickly?

More speculation than facts

Right-wing groups have speculated whether Paddock was an Islamist or a Trump-hating liberal. The website silenceisconsent.com openly debated whether he belonged to an anti-fascist organization.

Police say that Paddock was a lone gunman. Many social media conspiracy theories insist that at least two other shooters were involved in the mass killing. To prove their theory, groups like “The People’s Voice” embed blurry user videos in their articles. It seems that the ambiguity and credibility of the material only play a secondary role.

In the case of the Las Vegas shooting, Silicon Valley giants Google, Facebook and Twitter have been accused of not putting enough effort into containing the flood of reports – and worse than that, facilitating their proliferation. People who were trying to find information on Google about the shooting were directed to the website 4chan, which falsely claimed that the attacker was Geary Danley, the ex-husband of Paddock’s girlfriend. 4chan is known for spreading false information and conspiracy theories after mass shootings or terrorist attacks.

The rumor mills of right-wing sites like The Gateway Pundit were buzzing. Professional purveyors of fake news manipulated the algorithms set by Google, Facebook and other major internet sites, thus giving fake news broad media exposure. Yet only this summer, Facebook announced its intention to develop algorithms that detect false reports.

The business of lies

A lot of money can be made with fake news. A report published by the security software company Trend Micro revealed Darknet sites that offer fake news services. For $200,000 (170,000 euros), you can launch an agitational campaign that sparks public protest. For $55,000, you can discredit a journalist. The service packages usually offer fake profiles and groups in social networks, the fake content itself, and enough likes and retweets to spread the word quickly.

According to a study on fake news conducted by the London School of Economics and Political Science, online advertising is another source of revenue. Such advertising promotes visually appealing articles that generate large amounts of traffic. The veracity of the reports is of no importance. The programmed advertising scheme spreads automatically, which is why fake news reports on the Las Vegas shooting attract more online readers than reports by the New York Times.

Why is fake news successful?

In an interview with Germany’s public broadcaster ARD, social psychologist Catarina Katzer said that people are processing information more and more superficially due to the abundance of material of news and social media sites. “We know that we only read 10 to 15 percent of the pages we access online. Everything else falls into a black hole,” she said. This factor, combined with the alleged convenience of being able to verify the accuracy of reports, makes people susceptible to fake news.

“When we find things on the web, we always seek familiar cognitive structures or let them guide us,” Katzer added, saying that this selective perception could explain why people believe fake news: people’s existing views are merely validated.

 

Las Vegas survivors furious as YouTube promotes clips calling shooting a hoax

‘When I see my wife fighting for her life with a gunshot wound to her chest and my daughter was also shot, it’s pretty conclusive evidence that it did happen’

October 4, 2017

by Sam Levin in San Francisco

The Guardian

YouTube is promoting conspiracy theory videos claiming that the Las Vegas mass shooting was a hoax, outraging survivors and victims’ families, in the latest case of tech companies spreading offensive propaganda.

It’s only been days since a gunman inside the Mandalay Bay hotel opened fire on a music festival, killing 58 people and injuring more than 500. But videos questioning whether the shooting really happened and claiming that the government has lied about basic facts have already garnered millions of views on YouTube and are continuing to run rampant.

It appears YouTube is actively helping these videos reach wide audiences. Searching for “Las Vegas shooting videos” immediately leads to a wide range of viral videos suggesting that law enforcement and others have purposefully deceived the public. Some label the tragedy a “false flag”, a term conspiracy theorists typically use to refer to mass shootings they say are staged by the government to advance gun control.

Stephen Melanson, whose wife and daughter were both shot in the attack, told the Guardian he believed YouTube should take down videos suggesting the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history had been faked.

“When I see my wife fighting for her life with a gunshot wound to her chest, and my daughter was also shot, it’s pretty conclusive evidence that it did happen,” said Melanson, whose wife, two daughters and two friends escaped alive from the Route 91 Harvest festival Sunday night. “My daughter texted me … ‘There is a shooting right in front of us’ and another text said, ‘Mom is shot.’”

One video on the first page of results on the Google-owned video platform Wednesday morning was called Las Vegas ‘Shooting’ … Did It Actually Happen? and questioned whether the attack was “fake” and if victims were “actors”. It had more than 250,000 views after one day on the site.

YouTube told the Guardian that this footage and other specific conspiracy videos that appeared after a generic search did not violate its standards.

Complaints about YouTube enabling fake news follow reports that within hours of the tragedy, both Facebook and Google were actively promoting rightwing blogs and conspiracy sites, some misidentifying the shooter and claiming he was a Democrat who opposed Donald Trump. The proliferation of politicized propaganda comes as Silicon Valley corporations are facing increased scrutiny over their role in allowing false news to reach millions on their platforms, possibly assisting Russia’s efforts to interfere in US politics.

Conspiracy theories about mass shootings are nothing new in America, but some fear YouTube’s popularity and algorithms are exacerbating the problem. In addition to automatically suggesting Las Vegas conspiracy footage to people with basic search requests, YouTube has promoted a wide variety of fake related content to people who watch a single propaganda video.

That means for some, YouTube is not suggesting reputable media sources and instead is exposing them to dozens of videos painting a picture of a massive conspiracy.

After the Guardian watched one questionable video highlighted on the main Las Vegas shooting search page (from a gun rights advocate suggesting the facts didn’t add up), YouTube promoted: “Government Staged Las Vegas Mass Shooting” (215,000 views), “PROOF: MEDIA & LAW ENFORCEMENT ARE LYING ABOUT THE VEGAS SHOOTING” (660,000 views) and “PROOF Las Vegas shooting FALSE FLAG hoax” (70,000 views). The site automatically played a “Las Vegas HOAX Exposed” video (150,000 views).

YouTube declined to comment on whether it has since removed footage, and it’s unclear if the site has taken any measures to slow the spread of Las Vegas fake news.

“It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not a joke. It did happen. I was there,” said Krista Metz, a witness and survivor who said she was standing close to the stage when the gunshots began. The 45-year-old California woman and her cousin were nearly trampled and ended up running for miles to escape, she said. “We literally thought we were going to die.”

Metz said she was frustrated with wild speculation online and in traditional news coverage: “People are so crazy with their social media. They’ll believe everything they read … It’s horrible.”

Even if YouTube and other sites remove the content, many have already viewed the videos – and many more will continue to publish similar messages, Metz noted. “There are so many people that post so many random things. How could they monitor it?”

“I just want the facts,” she added.

YouTube released a short statement touting its ability to promote “thousands of news publishers that present a variety of viewpoints”, adding, “When a major news event happens, these sources are presented on the YouTube homepage under ‘Breaking News’ and featured in search results, with the label ‘Top News’.”

“False flag” claims online can have devastating consequences for shooting survivors and families. The outspoken father of one of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting has faced frequent harassment and death threats from conspiracy theorists who believe the massacre was faked. One hoaxer who targeted him was recently sentenced to prison.

A woman who was badly injured in the Aurora theater shooting in Colorado also faced vicious online attacks and harassment, with critics trying to hack into her email account and accusing her of being a pawn in a gun control conspiracy.

Melanson – whose family was rescued by a retired firefighter and whose wife remains in the hospital following a second surgery – said he feared the propaganda on YouTube could impede law enforcement: “It’s hindering the investigation. They are creating false information that the authorities will still have to investigate. It really slows down the process.”

The videos also hurt victims and survivors already struggling to cope with trauma, he added: “It’s not fair to all the family members who have been going through this.”

 

The Campaign To Rein In the Internet

It’s part and parcel of the “Russia-gate” hoax

October 5, 2017

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar

The latest “news” about Russia-gate is the contention that “Russian-linked” ad buyers purchased $100,000 worth of targeted Facebook ads during the 2016 presidential election. For the most part these ads didn’t urge support for any particular candidate, but, we’re told, they were “divisive,” “controversial,” and definitely Not Very Nice. So what did the ads say? Oh, that’s a secret that’s being closely guarded by all involved. Facebook is refusing to release the ads, and the congressional committee that’s investigating them – yes, our solons are on the case! – also refuses to say what the ads actually said: we’re just supposed to take their word for it that the ads were part of a Sinister Russian Conspiracy to Destroy Our Democracy.

So who were these mysterious Russians who were buying “divisive” Facebook ads that, we’re told, may have handed the election to Donald J. Trump for a measly $100,000 – and where’s the evidence they were Russians? Well, that’s also a secret. The many articles detailing this dark plot only tell us that the ads were “Russian-linked,” or, at best, “bought by Russians.” Which Russians? Do these people have names? Well, apparently not, but the name of an alleged organization does keep coming up: the “Internet Research Agency.”

We are told this Agency “has many names,” according to conspiracy theorist Adrian Chen. Writing in the New York Times, Chen claims that mysterious Russian oligarchs fund the elusive organization, which keeps moving its headquarters so as to remain undetected by the inquisitive Russian media. (Hey, I thought the Russian media was entirely under the control of Vladimir Putin!) Chen’s narrative is that the evil Russkies run gigantic “troll farms” that spend their time and energy pushing “fake news” – such as the story that there was a huge explosion at a chemical plant in Louisiana. Chen writes:

“Around 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 last year, Duval Arthur, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, got a call from a resident who had just received a disturbing text message. ‘Toxic fume hazard warning in this area until 1:30 PM,’ the message read. ‘Take Shelter. Check Local Media and columbiachemical.com.’”

It turned out to be a prank, dismissed as such by Mr. Arthur, but according to Chen it was all part of a Russian plot to do – what? It’s not at all clear. Chen claims that a whole panoply of internet phenomena – blog posts, YouTube videos, Twitter postings, etc. – were created in order to make it look like a real disaster was in the making in Louisiana. Chen describes two other hoaxes: one claiming that Ebola had broken out in Atlanta, and another that pushed a fake story about an unarmed African-American woman who had supposedly been shot by police (Chen doesn’t specify the alleged location.) “Who was behind all of this?” asks Chen:

“When I stumbled on it last fall, I had an idea. I was already investigating a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency.”

Does Chen show an actual connection to the Internet Research Agency? Not at all. He simply asserts it. Which is actually a pretty trollish thing to do….

One has to wonder: why would the Russian state be engaging in such nonsensical activities online? After all, as soon as the hoaxes were exposed, whoever was spreading them would lose credibility. So what, exactly, is the point? Chen doesn’t bother telling us: he merely moves on to describe his visit to Russia, where he stalked people going into the building where the Internet Research Agency was supposed to be located. Except, as it turned out, it wasn’t located there. Oh well, whatever dude …..

The “Russian troll farm” narrative has become a journalistic sub genre all by itself, with BuzzFeed (naturally!) taking the lead and documenting that these Putinite pests “made five bizarre YouTube videos attacking the U.S. government and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.” Oh, the audacity! Can’t those commies leave Harry Potter alone?! Russian trolls also posted misspelled and ungrammatical comments on the web sites of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and WorldNetDaily, a campaign which no doubt shook the very foundations of our republican form of government.

Both BuzzFeed and Chen focus on one alleged Russian troll in particular who goes by the name “I_Am_Ass” and whose avatar is a buttocks made up to look like a human face. Mr. Ass posted photos of President Obama with the caption “Obama’s fart – can you smell it?” Very effective!

This is the “troll army” the Russians are supposedly using to “flood” and “take over” the internet – as if puerile postings from “I_Am_Ass” are a credible threat to anything or anyone. The whole thing is a very bad joke – but before you start laughing, ask yourself: what is this really about?

With both Facebook and Twitter being hauled up before a congressional committee “investigating” this alleged Russian conspiracy – Facebook subsequently purged hundreds of accounts in response to political pressure, while Twitter did likewise – the motives of the witch-hunters are transparently obvious. What the “investigators” and their allies want is government censorship of the internet, which will be rationalized by accusations of “foreign influence” on the US political scene.

Of course, the internet is international: it does’t respect or recognize national boundaries. It’s everywhere, or practically everywhere. So any attempt to regulate content is going to run into problems immediately, which is why the US government is pressuring private companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to institute their own internet “filters,” with some success.

Ultimately, however, such efforts will fail, in part because people will abandon internet platforms that only allow “approved” content, and the narrowing of allowable content will eventually drive off all but the less engaged. In short, censorship is bad for business. Which means that, if the conspiracy theorists have their way, the government will have to step in and step on “foreign” content.

The Powers That Be have always hated the internet, and now they’re finally making some progress in their campaign to have it reined in. Using the “Russia threat” and Hillary Clinton’s loss to appeal to those who used to be called “liberals,” they’re teaming up with neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and foreign-funded (!) outfits like the Alliance to Secure Democracy to achieve their longtime dream of regulating internet content. And they have powerful allies in the Legacy Media, which has suffered huge losses due to competition from free internet media.

The Russia-gate hoax has many uses – providing cover for a politically bankrupt and intellectually dishonest Democratic party: restarting the cold war; promoting the “liberal”-neocon alliance. Yet paving the way for content controls – i.e. censorship – to be imposed on the internet has got to be the clearest and most present danger of them all.

 

Fact and Fiction News Examples

 Fact

International Israeli Internet Spying & Fraud

October 4, 2017

by Christian Jürs

For the past five years, there have been growing fears that somehow, outsiders have been able to penetrate into the confidential computer files of government agencies, business entities such as banks and defense contractors and individuals.

Some of this appeared to be an attempt to obtain highly classified information that could be of use to others and in other instances, attempts to get into the personal, and corporate, bank accounts of individuals and corporations.

This is a brief study of some of the salient aspects of this problem of computer theft and espionage and we will start with the discovery of massive computer penetration in Israel. We will then consider further penetrations of American business and intelligence computer systems by agents of a foreign government as opposed to confidence men and then conclude with the use of the same methods to commit frauds on the gullible in the United States and elsewhere.

Some of the first public notice of this problem surfaced first in Israel in 2004 when Israeli law enforcement cyber crime experts discovered that what is known as a Trojan Horse (illicit spyware planted on an unsuspecting computer) had been inserted into about 60 major Israeli businesses. Isreali law enforcement subsequently indicted various members of three of Israel’s largest private investigative agencies on charges of criminal fraud. These spyware plants were in various commercial areas such as : Israeli military contracting, telephone systems, cable television, finance, automobile and cigarette importing, journalism and high technology. These intrusive spyware plants were nearly identical with ones developed by the American NSA and widely used inside the United States to glean political, economic and counter-intelligence information from a huge number of American businesses and agencies. Israeli investigators believed that there was illicit cooperation between the American agency and a counterpart in Israel.

These Trojan horses that penetrated the Israeli computers came packaged inside a compact disc or were sent as an e-mail message that appeared to be from an institution or a person that the victims thought they knew very well. Once the program was installed, it functioned every time the victim’s computer system was in use, logging keystrokes or collecting sensitive documents and passwords before transmitting the information elsewhere.

This clandestine theft of valuable commercial, military and political secrets is certainly not limited to Israel and many important agencies and individuals have become increasingly concerned about what is called “phishing” in which both con men and foreign (and domestic) intelligence agencies can locate, capture and use valuable personal, political and financial information. In September of 2005, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an ad hoc group  of corporate and law enforcement groups that track identity theft and other online crimes, said it had received more than 13,000 unique reports of phishing schemes in that month alone, up from nearly 7,000 in the month of October, 2004..

In late 2005, a new form of phishing, called “spear-phishing” emerged.

So-called spear-phishing is a highly concentrated and far more effective version of phishing. That’s because those behind the schemes bait their hooks for specific victims instead of casting a broad, ill-defined net across cyberspace hoping to catch throngs of unknown victims.

Spear-phishing, say security specialists, is much harder to detect than phishing. Bogus e-mail messages and Web sites not only look like near perfect replicas of communiqués from e-commerce companies like eBay or its PayPal service, banks or even a victim’s employer, but are also targeted at people known to have an established relationship with the sender being mimicked. American banks such as Chase and Bank of America are among those whose names are faked and also the online auction house of Ebay and the international money transfer firm of PayPal receive considerable attention from the international conmen and credit thieves. These thieves are not necessarily gangs operating for financial gain but also include theft of trade secrets, private corporate banking and highly sensitive military and political information.

While some of these phishers are merely out to make money, others are interested in securing military secrets and political activities, all at the highest and what is hopefully considered as the most secure.

As a case in point, in June of 2005 , the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre, a British government agency that monitors national UK computer security, took the step of publicly warning about a spear-phishing campaign of “targeted Trojan e-mail attacks” aimed at industrial and government computer networks. The warning noted that the e-mail messages appeared to come from a trusted sender, that antivirus software and firewalls was completely incapable of  protecting  recipients, and that, in fact, there was no way to completely protect any computer connected to the Internet from the Trojan attacks once recipients opened and downloaded a faked e-mail message containing a virus.

The report noted that: “Files used by the attackers are often publicly available on the Web or have been sent to distribution lists,” the warning said. “The attackers are able to receive, trojanise and resend a document within 120 minutes of its release, indicating a high level of sophistication.”

In December of 2005, a more traditional phishing scam infected about 30,000 individual computers worldwide, according to CipherTrust, a computer security firm. Consisting of what CipherTrust said was about 50 million e-mail messages that a German hacker deployed simultaneously, the communiqués purported to come from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and a German intelligence agency and tried to convince recipients to provide personal information and open a file containing a virus. The F.B.I. issued a warning about the scheme and a spokeswoman said that thousands of people swamped the agency with phone calls inquiring about it. Public awareness and FBI actions sharply reduced and finally obliterated this specific form of fraud but no information has been released to the public by the FBI concerning the identity or motives of many of the hackers. No bank or financial institution ever contacts their depositors and customers by email with warnings about misuse of their credit cards or errors in their personal accounts. The phishers have advanced technologically to the point where actual company logos can be snatched from Web sites to build customized databases of corporate logos. Any email message purporting to come from any bank or financial institution, most especially one that has the proper company logo and format but contains grammatical errors should ever  be responded to.

Some computer security specialists suggest at least one basic approach that might allow e-mail recipients to learn right away that a communiqué appearing to come from a company like Amazon.com actually originated somewhere in the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia or any of the other places that law enforcement officials say are hot spots for phishing scams According to CipherTrust, a spear-phisher can rent a server for about $300 month after paying a $100 setup fee; install spam-sending software on the server for about $1,200 a month; and get spam-sending proxies, a database of e-mail addresses, and other necessary add-ons for another $1,900 a month. How much phishers make depends on how many victims they hook, but the relatively small expense means the work can be lucrative. According to a research report issued in June by Gartner Inc., a consulting firm, about 2.4 million Americans reported losing about $929 million to phishing schemes during the previous year.

In 2005, is has been estimated by the FBI and private cyber-protection agencies that about 73 million American adults who use the Internet believed that they received an average of more than 50 phishing e-mails during the prior 12 months. And that, of course, is just what Internet users actually know might be happening.

Phishers main goal is to obtain a victim’s checking-account number and, in addition,  credit card and A.T.M. card numbers, which they can copy onto bogus cards they have manufactured for the purpose of extracting money and goods from a victim’s account.

It should be noted that many American banks have serious security gaps in the software used to analyze magnetic stripe coding on the back of A.T.M. cards, and these gaps have permitted card hijackers to use bogus copies. American regulators, concerned about online vulnerabilities at the country’s banks, have sharply tightened security requirements at financial institutions.

Although Internet Provider (IP) numbers lead to Italy, the Netherlands, the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia, a secret investigation by NSA and other American domestic and foreign intelligence agencies has disclosed that almost all of the scams originate inside Israel and that while the Israeli authorities are aware of this, the fact that information considered “vital to the interests of the State of Israel” is part of the intercepts, no action has been taken against operations that are not directed against Israeli agencies or individuals.  Further, one of the caveats to the continued functioning of these enormously profitable computer frauds is that any monies gleaned from them must be deposited in Israeli, and not foreign, banks.

Israeli intelligence, having formed a cooperative association with Israeli internet swindlers, has, according to an NSA report, not hesitated to spy on their American counterparts.

Among the Israeli corporations on the receiving end of stolen information were two telecommunications affiliates of Bezeq, the country’s largest telephone company. The Israeli government held a controlling interest in Bezeq until it sold most of its stake to private investors, including Los Angeles media mogul Haim Saban, shortly before the Trojan horse scandal became public. A lawyer representing Bezeq and the two affiliates, YES and Pele-Phone, declined to comment on the investigation; Mr. Wismonsky said that Bezeq itself appeared to have been a victim, not a recipient, of stolen information.

Israeli intelligence also is able to oversee almost all telephonic contacts, to include internet usage, in the United States.

This is accomplished by obtaining and analyzing data that is generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a telephone call.

Here is how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing inside the U.S. are done for the telephone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private telecommunications company.

Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest telephone companies in America, and even more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible for any American to make a call on any American phone without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. In 1999, the super secret National Security Agency, headquartered in Ft. George Meade in northern Maryland, issued what is called a Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular.

Investigators do not believe such calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is extremely valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms…combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior, such as who the targeted customers are calling is also noted.

The Amdocs memo says the system should be publicly advertised as “helping to prevent telephone fraud.” However, U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could, and unquestionably was, also be used to spy via the records of the American telephone system. The N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used.

At one classified NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argonne National Laboratory was used to show that if phone records are not completely secure, major security breaches are more than possible.

Another NSA briefing document said, “It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization…citing on exploitable vulnerabilities.”

Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. “Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas…. We buy rather than train or develop solutions.”

U.S. intelligence does not officially believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first time that such a thing has happened.

In a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, telephone information, specifically of the type that Amdocs collects, was used to “completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEA and the LAPD.”

There has been considerable but very quiet concern about the 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on.

There exists a classified Justice Department report stating that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning?

What investigators have stated is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and extremely vague and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the Israeli desire to protect what are called “sources and methods” in the intelligence community while at the same time attempting to convince American authorities that they were being cooperative and friendly. There is very substantive and documented evidence that those sources and methods were, and still are, taking place in the United States.

The question arose in the Select Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, chaired by former CIA agent, Porter Goss. Concern was expressed concerning this Mossad spying issue but nothing came of this and the matter was very quickly, and quietly, shelved

An official listing of known Mossad agents and a much larger one listing Mossad informants in the United States is perhaps the best indicator of the degree and extent that this official Israeli organ has penetrated American security, business and military organizations. Its publication would certainly create terrible havoc and would very adversely impact on American/Israeli diplomatic and military relations.

Reports indicate that such established agencies as the Anti Defamation League, several identified national newspapers and one major television network also harbor and assist a significant number of active Mossad agents engaged in espionage activities.

The concern about telephone security extends to another company, founded in Israel, that provides the technology used by the U.S. government for electronic eavesdropping. The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Investigative reports also indicate that these offices have been and are being used as bases for intelligence operations directed against the United States via the Mossad agents working in this country.

Here is the method that foreign wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time a call is made in America, it passes through the nation’s elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of technical errors. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have reluctantly acknowledged that while CALEA made officially authorized, and unauthorized, wiretapping much easier for Federal authorities, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Congress insists the equipment it permits to be installed is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

In this case, the unauthorized parties is the Israeli Mossad and through them, the government and commercial interests of Israel itself.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs and gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all privately stated that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide because of the enormous political and political power wielded by the Israeli lobby, the extremely pro-Israeli American television and print media and many Jewish financial organizations in the United States.

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they have been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. The FBI’s own small office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the Israeli ongoing threat.

It is the FBI’s office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they have awarded the majority of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse lucrative U.S. government contracts over the years now work for the Israeli-based company.

Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call “troublesome circumstances” that still remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.

And what troubles investigators the most, particularly in New York City, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that in a number of cases, suspects they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. This began as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place

There are growing and very serious concerns in a very significant number of top-level American intelligence and counterintelligence. Many of these agencies have begun compiling evidence, and instigating a very highly classified investigation, into the very strong probability that the Israeli government is directly involved in this matter and has been from the outset.

Speaking confidentially, top U.S. intelligence agencies indicate that “the last thing needed is another Pollard scandal.”

Following the 9/11 attacks, Federal officials have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an “organized intelligence-gathering operation.” The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law. Some of these detainees are being investigated for their possible penetration of known Arab terrorist groups located in the United States, Canada and Europe and through this, having gained specific knowledge of the time and location of the September 11 attacks.

It has been established that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and a recent Justice Department report describes concerns that the federal government’s own wiretapping system may be vulnerable.

In Los Angeles, in 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigation suddenly collapsed. The suspects: Israeli organized crime organizations, composed mostly of Russian Jews, with ongoing operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt.

The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud. . A DEA report under date of December 18 stated that there existed serious security breaches in DEA telecommunications by unauthorized “foreign nationals” — and cites an Israeli-owned firm with which the DEA contracted for wiretap equipment .

The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents, is that the Israeli-based gangsters had the Federal and State law enforcement beepers, cell phones, even home phones under constant surveillance. Some identified Israeli gangsters who did get caught, readily admitted to having hundreds of confidential law enforcement telephone and beeper numbers and had been using them to avoid arrest.

An official LAPD intelligence report states:

“This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The Israeli-based criminal organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service.”

Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, “The (criminal) organization has apparent extensive access to database systems used to identify pertinent personal and biographical information.”

When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm’s data is getting into the wrong hands.

When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Asked about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions with frightened circumspection. The reason for this is also contained in the body of several U.S. investigative and highly classified reports. The extremely competent Israeli Foreign Intelligence branch, the MOSSAD, had penetrated the groups of terrorists who planned, and eventually executed, the hijacked aircraft attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House. After some debate in the highest official circles in Tel Aviv, the Israeli government decided to pass the very concrete and specific information about the September 11th attack to competent authority in the United States. This was done on three specific occasions, the Department of State, the CIA and the NSC all having been given MOSSAD reports. The nature of the attacks were specified as were two different dates of attack. That the Bush Administration was informed of this planned attack by a putative ally and in specific detail and did nothing to attempt to circumvent it, came as a great surprise to Israeli officials.  When it became obvious to them that their specific and timely warnings were obviously ignored, it then put Israel politicians in the position of having information which, if released to the American public, would cause terminal political damage, they decided, according to intercepted internet communication, that discretion was the better part of valor

Fiction

 TWA Flight 800

Whenever a disaster happens that, unlike a volcanic eruption or a huge forest fire, cannot be immediately explained, a great gathering of self-serving individuals begin to spout forth theories, plans, tales of “secret documents,” and “confidential communications” with unnamed “experts.” The purpose of expounding these weird tales generally is to draw attention to the expounder. That no reputable segment of any media bothers with discussing these theories is always attributed to control by an irate Government who are furious at the brilliance of the theorist and who spend endless hours spying on them, opening their solicitations from NAMBLA and installing microphones in their desks at the local Humane Society.

As a case in point, let us consider a well-known tragedy. First come the actual facts and then the actual fictions.

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131 registered as N93119, took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York) enroute to Charles De Gaulle International Airport (Paris).

The aircraft was flying more than eight miles off the cost of East Moriches, New York (part of Long Island) when the fuel tank exploded. The aircraft banked and the front part of the aircraft broke off. The wind pushed the aircraft into a climb. Then, the aircraft went into a dive, causing the wings to break off the aircraft. Pieces of the aircraft plummeted down into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers on board.

After what has been billed as the longest and most expensive accident investigation in American aviation history, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board  (NTSB) investigation found that the flammable fuel/air mixture of the center wing fuel tank probably ignited due to electrical failure in the center fuel tank, causing the plane to explode in flight. The FBI agreed that there had been no criminal act after examining all the plane’s wreckage that had been recovered. In May of 1997, mechanics discovered a fuel leak in a Boeing 737-200 that they believed was caused by the kind of electrical arcing suspected of causing the TWA Flight 800 fatal explosion. NTSB investigators believed that the same kind of arcing from the wiring in the center fuel tank of TWA Flight 800 sparked the explosion that brought the plane down. As a result of extensive and very through testing, the NTSB issued an “airworthiness directive” requiring the immediate inspection of the wiring of older 747s. In April, it recommended further inspections and design changes in the wiring of 747s and in Boeing 707s and C-130 transport planes, as well.

Eight years after the crash, in February 2004, the FAA indicated that it would start the process of ordering airlines to install a fuel tank inerting system in most of their aircraft. It was stated that the order would probably actually be issued within two years, and then the airlines would be required to install the devices over the subsequent seven years. The FAA stated that, including the TWA Flight 800 crash, there had been three fuel tank explosions in airliners over the previous 14 years (the two others having occurred on the ground),

Various groups and individuals continue to maintain that the plane was downed by a bomb or missile, and that there was a subsequent cover-up to disguise the real cause of the crash.

The “terrorist theory” was, as usual, one of the first to be mentioned, especially due to the fact that the accident happened during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, where a bomb exploded ten days later. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, these alternate explanations have been revisited, as some officials and commentators have mentioned this disaster among lists of terrorist attacks. Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, a retired naval officer who conducted an independent investigation, disagrees with the official theory. According to Commander Donaldson, “jet airliners built by the American aerospace industry have logged at least 150 thousand years of flight time. Not once has there ever been a spontaneous fuel tank explosion on any fuel tank while airborne” (Letter to NTSB 11-14-97).

Donaldson concluded that the airplane was “shot down by missiles.” He interviewed hundreds of witnesses and said he reconstructed the flight paths of these missiles by triangulating the eyewitness accounts. Soon after, a photo that a passenger of a North American Airlines plane arriving at JFK supposedly took, seemed to support the missile theory because the “photo” showed a “missile” missing the NA Airlines jet narrowly.

Pierre Salinger, a former White House press secretary to President John F. Kennedy and ABC News journalist, prominently and repeatedly claimed he had proof that the flight was downed by a missile from a U.S. Navy ship. The documents on which he relied were later found to be vague rumors that had been distributed over Usenet, with attributions only to many “unnamed experts”.

Some people briefly gave the name of Pierre Salinger Syndrome to the tendency to believe things that one reads on the bloggers of the Internet.

One such theory has the US Navy conducting tests of submarine-to-air missiles, accidentally hitting Flight 800, and then covering up the fatal error. After initial denials, the U.S. Navy later admitted that USS Wyoming (SSBN-742), commissioned only days before, was conducting sea trials in the area, and that USS Trepang (SSN-674) and USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) were conducting unspecified operations in the area.

It should be noted that all three of these submarines lacked any surface to air missile armament as part of their standard munitions loadout (as do all submarines). It is possible that any of the three subs could have been carrying MANPADS missiles. However all three subs were more than 50 miles (80 km) away from the crash site, very far outside the range of any MANPADS missile in the world. One suggested possibility is that the type of missile involved may be classified.

Another possible alternate theory involving the US Navy is that a missile was fired from the USS Normandy (CG-60), operating 185 nautical miles (340 km) south of the TWA 800 crash site.

This is well outside of the range of currently deployed Standard Missiles carried by US ships, almost double the range of the current Block IIIB versions, and just within the future Block IV ER versions.

Even if this were a test of a Block IV version, although there is no evidence for this, at the extreme range in question the engine would have long burned out and the warhead would be gliding. This contradicts the main claim that a missile was involved, which is a number of eyewitness accounts claiming to have seen “a missile trail almost vertical under the explosion site.”

Furthermore, inventories of USS Normandy’s missile complement immediately following the crash of TWA 800 showed no missiles missing from the inventory, according to the US Navy

Regardless of the very faint possibility of any number of missiles and missile launch platforms being in the vicinity of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, no evidence of any kind of a missile impact exists within the recovered wreckage, according to a study conducted by the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Technology

However, at least one individual involved at higher levels with the FBI’s portion of the recovery operations has stated publicly that he saw during his involvement predominant evidence in the state of the wreckage, the form of the wreckage field, the state of the victim’s remains, public and confidential actions by the airlines, investigation officials, and the Navy following the event, and other factors that convinced him the crash was the result of an “accidental missile strike.”

Unfortunately, they have neglected to produce their evidence, claiming that the FBI and the CIA broke into their apartment and stole it, along with certain adult magazines, a picture of Matt Drudge in a leather thong and a six pack of warm beer.

One of the usual “reliable eyewitnesses” was a Malvina Tidwell of Long Island who claimed she and her husband, Oscar, (since deceased) “positively identified” an Arab submarine, firing rockets, from their vantage point of the beach where they were looking for driftwood. “I knew it was an Arab sub,” Tidwell said, “because they had men with beards running around the deck and a green flag with Arab writing on it.” Mrs Tidwell is legally blind and her husband, who also gave a long interview to the alternative media, was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s Disease and believed that he was the illegitimate son of Harry Truman.

For instance, the following affidavit, dated January 2003 (and which looks very much like blogger information that was passed around the internet shortly after the crash), is being listed as one of the “articles of evidence” in recent FOIA suits pressed by Captain Ray Lahr against the National Transportation Safety Board: This document states he viewed “radar tapes” and took part in “phone conversations” which convinced him Flight 800 was a victim of friendly fire, and that he later passed on this information to Pierre Salinger (Note such anomalies as the doubling of every statement in the affidavit, the second half being a reworded version of the first half).

Elaine Scarry, in a number of articles in the New York Review of Books, has raised the possibility of electromagnetic interference being responsible for the accident. It has also been suggested that an electronic death ray developed by the brilliant Nicholas Tesla and utilized by a mysterious group calling itself the Hidden Hand brought down the plane in furtherance of a plan that no one seems to know about. The Hidden Hand was supposed to have  detonated an atomic bomb over Houston, Texas on Christmas Day of 2004 but apparently was unsuccessful as Houston, unfortunately, is still intact, though wet.

A number of strange “alternate theories” surrounding TWA 800 relied on so-called eye witness accounts as collected by the FBI. However, very few of the witnesses were within five miles (8 km) of TWA 800 at the time of the accident, according to a witness map provided by the NTSB. The vast majority of the witnesses were too far away from the accident scene to discern any significant details, and some witnesses describe events that are well beyond the visual acuity of humans

Ex- CBS Investigator Kristina Borjesson, (email: FKLB@aol.com) and co-workers (including Oliver Stone) were on a documentary project for ABC, until it was aborted. Ms. Borjesson’s “documentary” involved the scores of the usual “eyewitnesses” who were desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame and who claimed they saw “something streaking from the ocean toward the plane.” This documentary was for a show, Declassified, that was being produced by Oliver Stone and slated to air on ABC. But the Stone connection grew controversial, and ABC canceled the program. CBS also immediately dissociated itself from Ms. Borjesson. Josh Howard, a senior producer at 60 Minutes, said, “Her official relationship with CBS ended before she pitched that story. (About mythic ‘rocket fuel’ being found on a strip of cloth alleged to have come from one of the passenger seats on Flight 800) She had maybe a month to go on her contract. She was anxiously looking around for other projects to prolong her employment.”

The 800 flight number was retired and replaced with flight 924 after the crash, although TWA continued to operate flights between New York and Paris. In spring 2001, TWA merged with American Airlines. Of the exposers of the Real Truth, thoroughly discredited Pierre Salinger has since died and Ms Borjesson has slipped into professional oblivion, along with many others.

Fact

 The Facts, not Fictions, concerning the destruction of the World Trade Center

Dislodged fireproofing felled World Trade Center

April 6, 2005

Agence France Presse

The twin towers of the World Trade Center would probably be standing today, if the impact of the planes used in the September 11, 2001 attack had not destroyed fireproofing material, experts said.

After what it described as the most detailed examination of a building failure ever conducted, the US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said it would be suggesting major changes to the way skyscrapers are built and managed.

In assessing the events that led to World Trade Center’s collapse, the NIST report said the structural impact of the planes and subsequent jet fuel-ignited, multi-floor fires were not in themselves enough to bring the towers down.

“The reason the towers collapsed is because the fireproofing was dislodged,” said Shyam Sunder, lead investigator for the NIST building and fire safety investigation into the disaster.

If the fireproofing had remained in place, Sunder said, the fires would have burned out and moved on without weakening key elements to the point of structural collapse.

He drew an analogy with the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster when the absence of a small piece of insulation foam — knocked off during launch — allowed fire to seep into the shuttle’s entire wing span during re-entry with catastrophic results.

New alternatives to traditional fireproofing should be explored, Sunder said, citing a paint-like substance which, if applied in sufficient layers, would stick “even if a plane hit it.”

Nearly 2,750 people were killed in the attack on the World Trade Center by members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

Roughly 17,400 people were in the skyscrapers at the time of the attack, and NIST estimated that the death toll would have been closer to 14,000 if the two towers had been filled to their 50,000-person capacity.

The report said each jet severed perimeter columns, damaged interior core columns and dislodged fireproofing as they penetrated the buildings. The weight carried by the severed columns was spread to others.

Fires caused by the jet fuel were fed by the building contents and oxygen entering through breached walls and windows.

“The floors weakened and sagged from the fires, pulling inward on the perimeter columns,” the report said.

“Floor sagging and exposure to high temperatures caused the perimeter columns to bow inward and buckle — a process that spread across the faces of the buildings.

“Collapse then ensued,” it said.

In examining the emergency services response on September 11 and the evacuation procedures, the NIST report echoed other probes in highlighting a lack of coordination and poor communications equipment.

The report cited one senior emergency services officer inside the north tower of the trade center as saying he would have known more about what was going on if he had been watching it on television.

“The lack of timely information sharing and inadequate communication capabilities, likely contributed to the loss of emergency responder lives,” the report concluded.

The evacuation of the twin towers has generally been called a success, with 87 percent of the occupants — including more than 99 percent of those below the floors hit by the planes — managing to get out.

The south tower collapsed 56 minutes after impact and the north tower in 102 minutes.

The NIST report noted that a full-capacity evacuation would have taken around four hours — a fatal length of time.

Occupants were often unprepared for the physical challenge of evacuating from higher floors. “It’s pretty demanding, especially if you want to do it fast,” Sunder said.

The NIST report, running to some 10,000 pages, is still in draft form, with a final version, complete with definitive findings and recommendations, to be released in September.

Comment: How can this be? Haven’t brilliant, fearless reporters and daring bloggers exposed the Real Truth behind the 911 disaster? What has happened to the Plasmoid Clouds? The Chinese/Bulgarian Guided Missiles? The ex-Soviet Scientists working with the CIA, Mossad and the Illuminati? What about the self-sacrificing US Army Special Forces who actually went inside the buildings, acting on orders from Laura Bush and the Freemasons, and blew the Twin Towers, and themselves, up? And the acres of foreign rocket engine parts strewed all over New York’s streets, or huge lakes of molten steel found by unidentified rescue workers in the cellars of the WTC? God, will these disillusions never end? Here we have reassurance that all is not lost after all…. Next week, a stunning report will emerge on how Nicolas Tesla’s Z-Ray, controlled by former KGB officers stationed on Planet X, actually brought down the two buildings,  as well as the Pentagon! Ed.

Fiction

 The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!

July 20, 2005

by Lisa E. Pease

Foundation for Eternal Truths

At first we were told that Lee Oswald killed Kennedy and then that Ruby killed Oswald. I have written and spoken on this often to rapt audiences who truly understand my interest in Real Truth. Yes, others have attempted to give us alternative theories and for years I have wrestled with all of the incongruities in the many books published since that day in November of 1963.

One day, I suddenly realized that I was approaching my quest for Real Truth the wrong way and that to become enlightened, I would have to search in other areas for enlightenment.

I traveled to India with my co-worker, Wally Sheets, and we went to Nepal in search of a man whom I will call here, the Perfect Master. He lives high up in the mighty Himalayas, a plain and simple guru of great Internal Insight and Power. Wally gave up the Quest and returned to Pomona but I remained and finally was granted a Blessed Audience with the Perfect Master.

It was hard to actually look at him, so powerful was His Radiance but I overcame my fears and realized that he could see directly into my heart. He asked me what I wished and I told him that I wanted to know the Real Truth about the Kennedy Assassination.

He closed his eyes and meditated for nearly an hour before speaking.

I cannot begin to tell my readers the intense thrill I felt when I heard His words!

Suddenly, like a bolt of lightening, the Real Truth was before me!

I felt humbled yet proud in my new knowledge which I am now ready to reveal to the entire world!

In our world today, there are great men called the Adjudicators who move among mankind to guide us on the Right Path. They are sworn enemies of the Disharmonic Vibrations that come from evil sources seeking eternal control over mankind to enslave their Inner Fire. These Great Ones move silently among us, unseen but seeing all. They deflect the Disharmonic Vibrations and protect us from their evil and allow us to find True Peace and Understanding.

From the Perfect Master, it was revealed to me that it was the Adjudicators who killed Kennedy with a ray of Inner Cleansing. They killed him because he was a true Imp of Satan and was leading us straight into the jaws of Hell on Earth! Yes, Kennedy was revealed to me as the Black One whom those who project the Disharmonic Vibrations into our infantile minds have set up as one of their Controllers.

Viewed in this light of the Real Truth, the killing in Dallas at once becomes Revealed Truth from the Consciousness of the Perfect Master!

I have made a video and a tape of my Revelations and these will soon be available through my website now being constructed for me at The Foundations for Eternal Truths and as part of my New Awakening, I will be giving lectures across the United States in 2006 to reveal everything to the people for the first time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 responses so far

  1. Dear Sirs: I have been reading and enjoying your site for many years, ever since reading that David Wilcock mentioned TBR as a great insider source of information. Imagine my anger and disgust when I read the article labeling as fact that the Trade Center Towers collapsed because fireproofing was shaken loose. It insults my intelligence and breaks the laws of physics that it is in any way possible for those planes to have brought down the towers, not even mentioning building 7. I have noticed over the years that the one area where your news organization has seldom had much credibility was anything to do with 9/11. I’ve seen before that your articles exaggerate and belittle alternate theories in spite of the fact that the official story is absurd, contradictory and impossible. I believe it has been well established which 3 countries were involved, who did it, how they did it, and why they did it, so that your article of disinformation can only harm your reputation.
    Sincerely, John C Brewer

  2. I was watching the event on television at the time. An NYPD helicopter was slowly circling one of the towers that had been impacted. It was about 100′ away from the building. When it came to the opening caused by the aircraft impact, one could see the ragged hole, the burn marks on the building and, most important, the sagging metal support beams. I remarked to a friend who was watching with me that if the support beams were compromised to that degree, there was a very reasonable belief that the building could collapse. It did, downwards. Then, like the very recent Las Vegas shooting, the strange stories began to appear. It was (non-existant) Thermeet. No, it was something else. No, it was Russian bombers. And, of course, there was a story about “lakes of liquid steel” found weeks later in the subcellar of the building. By that time, any liquid steel would have hardened. Chris Bollyn invented this and got fired from the AFP for his creation. Now we read on YouTube, home of the fantasy people, stories about the shooting in Las Vegas, primarily that there was no shooting in Las Vegas and that it was all an act. Just like the moon landing others claimed was shot in a Hollywood studio. Many people like to be in possession of information that only a few, to include themselves, know about. If Yellowstone park area erupted in a volcanic action, spewing ash for hundreds of miles, trust me there would rapidly be stories about the Hidden Hand causing this with a small atomic bomb dropped down a geyser. Or powerful electro-magnetic rays from the Sun, or Pluto or somewhere in Wisconsin, being the true culprit. No one has produced a scintilla of believable evidence that the 911 collapse of the WTC buildings was caused by anything but the weakening of the internal support system due to the fires caused by the impact of hijacked commercial airliners. Not Russian bombers, Thermeet, robot geese, the Illuminati, a radicalized group of Georgian Girl Scouts. But one might examine the thesis that George H.W. Bush and his crime partner, Karl Rove, instigated the attack(s) to solidify the power of his useless drunk of a son and the radical Republicans. One of the reasons no one looks at this is because the establishment has created and encouraged a great forest of wild rumors to hide the facts.

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