The Invasion of Afghanistan, October 7, 2001: Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?
This article by award winning author Professor David Ray Griffin was first published by Global research in June 2010
There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.”1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.
Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one: If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft – hire mercenaries!
There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?
This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether the war during the past several years has been justified by those attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.
However, what can be designated the “McChrystal Moment” – the probably brief period during which the media are again focused on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Rolling Stone story about General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation – provides the best opportunity for some time to raise fundamental questions about this war. Various commentators have already been asking some pretty basic questions: about the effectiveness and affordability of the present “counterinsurgency strategy” and even whether American fighting forces should remain in Afghanistan at all. But I am interested in an even more fundamental question: Whether this war was ever really justified by the publicly given reason: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This question has two parts: First, did these attacks provide a legal justification for the invasion of Afghanistan? Second, if not, did they at least provide a moral justification?
https://australiannationalreview.com/2018/07/12/the-invasion-of-afghanistan-october-7-2001-did-9-11-justify-the-war-in-afghanistan/
Backlash against “war on cash” reaches Washington & China
The electronic-payments industry, which gets a cut from every electronic transaction, wants to kill cash. But wait…
Not so long ago, it seemed that the death of cash was both inevitable and imminent. The war against physical money was advancing on all fronts. Cash, already with technological and generational trends stacked against it, faced an imposing array of enemies, including private banks, fintech firms, telecom behemoths, credit card giants, assorted NGOs, tech magnates like Bill Gates and Tim Cook, a bewildering alphabet soup of UN agencies and many national governments. All wanted (and to a great extent still want) to accelerate the demise of physical money, for their own disparate motives.
But a study released in June by UK-based online payments company Paysafe confirmed that consumers on both sides of the Atlantic continue to cling to physical lucre: 87% of consumers surveyed in the UK, Canada, the US, Germany, and Austria said they had used cash to make purchases in the last month, 83% visited ATMs, and 41% said they are not interested in even hearing about cash alternatives.
Now, even certain branches of government are pushing back against the cashless trend. In Washington D.C., city councilors have introduced a new bill that would make it illegal for restaurants and retailers not to accept cash or charge a different price to customers depending on the type of payment they use. The bill is in response to efforts by retailers in the city and around the country – like the salad chain Sweetgreen – to go 100% cashless.
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/backlash-against-war-on-cash-reaches-washington-china/
Intelligent Assistants Have Poor Usability: A User Study of Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri
Summary: Usability testing finds that both voice-only and screen-based intelligent assistants work well only for very limited, simple queries that have fairly simple, short answers. Users have difficulty with anything else.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/intelligent-assistant-usability/
How Betaine with Pepsin Can Help with Hashimoto’s
Dr Izabella Wentz writes:
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll likely have heard of betaine with pepsin. Betaine with pepsin was one of the most helpful supplements I came across during my health journey. I often tell the story about how this supplement changed my life. Excessive fatigue was my most challenging symptom.
I was chronically exhausted and needed to sleep for 11 to 12 hours to feel human. Things didn’t get much better, despite starting thyroid medications in 2010, and even going gluten and dairy free in 2011.
I didn’t think the fatigue would ever leave.
Quite honestly, I accepted it as part of who I was. But then I started taking betaine with pepsin on Friday, February 10, 2012 — one capsule with each meal containing protein. I was surprised to wake up the following morning at 8 am without an alarm. I had been dragging myself out of bed after 10 most mornings when I did not have to work. Strangely, I continued to feel energetic all day. I even stayed awake when my usually much more energetic husband took a nap. Things became easier, and all of a sudden, I felt that I had a surplus of time. I felt more at ease going to bed and even had time to meditate, which was something that I had wanted to do for years!
In this updated article, you’ll learn:
How common low stomach acid is in those with Hashimoto’s
How betaine with pepsin can help Hashimoto’s
Who should not take betaine with pepsin
How to determine the dose that’s right for you
Recommended betaine with pepsin supplements
Alternate ways to support low stomach acid
https://thyroidpharmacist.com/articles/hashimotos-and-low-stomach-acid/
The Four Legged Stool
A few weeks ago I met a really nice guy week battling the debilitating after effects of some medication he was prescribed. As a result I was lying in bed thinking about the state of our “health care” system that is leaving so many people incapacitated.
One of the lessons I have been taught is that it is really effective to determine what the product is that you are going for in any situation. It is also a good way to evaluate other persons or groups. What is their product?
For instance their are two possible products that could be obtained by a primary health care practitioner.
The first and more optimum product of a health care professional is a person returned to full health, symptom free. If you have a health care provider who is one of those, cherish them and broadly promote them! They deserve it and your family and friends do too!
The second, and more common product, is a person whose disease state is “managed or under control”, usually with medication.
One problem with this disease management scenario is that because each drug has an average of 75 side-effects, one of which is death, most people end up on three or more medications, many of them to combat the symptoms of earlier prescribed drugs.
The result of this is a monthly or quarterly recurring income for the prescribing pill pusher and drug company and a life of paying and pill popping and degenerating health for the patient.
I looked over this scene and concluded it was like a four legged stool that would fall over if one leg was removed.
The Four Legs
1. The uneducated, misinformed general public who are only after a “quick fix” to their symptoms, unaware that those symptoms are merely a manifestion of an underlying cause. A cause that unless addressed, will result in more symptoms.
2. Those medicos only after a quick buck, sometimes unaware that they should, sometimes unaware of how to educate the public to change their diet and lifestyle choices to reverse the underlying cause of their symptoms.
3. The profit driven pharmaceutical companies who are marketing their drugs to doctors, the public, the government and government agencies. These companies are not reward for cures, only for perpetual customers.
4. The legislative and administrative arms of the government. The former are supposed to legislate for the best interests of the public but are heavily lobbied with incomplete and false information and campaign funded by the drug companies so establish laws and policies that benefit those drug companies.
The solution is to do what we can to kick one or more legs out from underneath this stool! This will not happen overnight and neither you not I can do it alone. But there are already plenty of people doing something about it and we can do a lot worse than forward their messages.
Step one is to do the best for yourself with regards to diet and lifestyle and thereby set a good example to your family and friends and others you meet.
Step two is to tell those who will listen what you are doing and why you are doing it. Do what you can to forward solutions on your comm lines. If a friend raves about a good naturopath, pass it on! If you read a good article on Facebook, click the Like and Share buttons. If you get a newsletter from some else or me that resonates with you, forward it.
Step three is to ask your GP or whomever you need to consult for your health, “What is our product here, what are we trying to accomplish?” If they are of the “Nothing can be cured” camp, don’t walk, run for the door and ask your friends who they know who had the same condition as you who was returned to health and find the health care practitioner who they consulted.
Step four is to continue to educate yourself on those things that work and don’t to improve your health and then implement what you learn!
This article did not start as a plug for my book but I would be remiss if I did not point out that you can seriously shortcut your learning curve by starting with it: www.howtolivethehealthiestlife.com
There are many more things that can be done to kick a leg out from under that stool but if you complete those four steps above you will know more than most and you will know what you need to do further.
Russian Election Meddling and The Downing of MH17: the unproven allegations you’re being told are ‘facts’
Australian politicians and media have joined the global frenzy over US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s apparent acceptance of the “evil” “thug” Putin’s word that Russia didn’t interfere in the US election, over the word of his own intelligence agencies, who are presumed to have the highest level of competence in the world. The Australian media are exploiting the fourth anniversary of the tragic downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine and the grief of the families of the victims to pile on the hysteria and attack anyone who dares to express support for Trump’s desire to achieve peace with Russia. They are abusing the word “facts” to assert that Russia did meddle in the election, and did “murder” Australians on MH17. Following are their claims, which have been retailed in the media with the same breathless certainty as they used in reporting on claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in 2003; we contrast the claims with evidence and investigations that show them to be unproven or outright false assertions.
I: Russia ‘hacked’ the 2016 US presidential election
It is alleged that Russian intelligence officers/agents “hacked” the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computers on 5 July 2016 to obtain, and later publish via WikiLeaks, material damaging to Hillary Clinton’s prospects of winning the election. The emails and other material made public included evidence that the DNC had helped Clinton rig the Democratic Party primaries against her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders. This allegation is routinely presented as the “unanimous” finding of US intelligence agencies.
This charge is demonstrated in many ways to be an unproven allegation, not “fact”:
Independent metadata analysis of the DNC leak’s metadata concluded that the communications had been copied by an insider, not “hacked” remotely. (Metadata is “data about data”, and includes the times of its creation and modification.) Former US National Security Agency (NSA) Technical Director William Binney, now a member of watchdog group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), endorsed this finding in a 24 July 2017 memorandum co-authored by former IBM Program Manager for Information Technology Skip Folden. They wrote: “In the early evening [of 5 July 2016], Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 megabytes of data in 87 seconds…. That speed is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack. It thus appears that the purported ‘hack’ of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device.” (Emphasis in original.) Another DNC document, released 15 June 2016 by purported hacker Guccifer 2.0, himself (rather than via WikiLeaks, which has a perfect record for authenticity), “was synthetically tainted with ‘Russian fingerprints’”, presumably in an attempt to implicate Russian Intelligence, the analysis found.
“All 17 US intelligence agencies” did not find “the Kremlin” responsible for “hacking” the DNC. Only four agencies were involved in the three major reports issued by the US government on this matter in the waning months of the Obama Administration:
A one-page “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security”, published 7 October 2016, asserted: “The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organisations.” (Emphasis added.) No evidence was provided; and “confident” has no legal meaning, nor is it part of official US intelligence terminology. Then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper is an infamous liar—a perjurer, in fact. When asked at a 12 March 2013 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, “Does the NSA [National Security Agency] collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”, Clapper stated under oath: “No, Sir. Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect but not, not wittingly.” Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed three months later that the NSA was (and is) constantly spying on all Americans, and much of the world besides.
A second document, the 29 December 2016 “GRIZZLY STEPPE—Russian Malicious Cyber Activity”, was a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It, too, used deliberately misleading language to imply firm conclusions where none existed, including by conflating cyber “threat groups” with (Russian) hacker collectives, when in fact the definition of a “threat group” is a set of technical indicators, which any hacker worth his salt can mimic to cover his tracks. Its first page, however, disclaimed: “This report is presented ‘as is’ for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.” The FBI admitted that it had not even examined the DNC server, but had relied upon forensic analysis purportedly done by the DNC’s cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike’s founder and Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a virulently anti-Russian think tank in Washington, DC.
The third, supposedly definitive report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”, was released 6 January 2017 by the perjurer Clapper, and identified as a joint production of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the FBI, and the NSA. Once again, no evidence was provided; the CIA and FBI merely reiterated their “high” confidence of Russia’s guilt. The NSA, however—which, given its all-pervasive surveillance, would have the hard data if it existed—expressed only “moderate” confidence. This report disclaimed: “Judgements are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” Even President Barack Obama, in his final press conference in office, 18 January 2018, described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as “not conclusive”. The report did, however, acknowledge that all the material leaked through WikiLeaks and incriminating Clinton and DNC officials, appeared genuine. Clapper testified to Congress in May 2018 that the report was the work of only around two dozen “hand-picked” analysts from the three agencies.
II: Russia shot down Flight MH17
As of 24 May 2018 the Russian military, specifically the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, stands accused by the Dutch and Australian governments of having shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. Various Western politicians and media pundits, as well as some relatives of the victims, have gone so far as to accuse Russia, and President Vladimir Putin personally, of “murder”, implying that the aircraft was targeted deliberately. To date, however, the MH17 investigations have not produced conclusive evidence of what happened:
The Dutch-led international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) refuses to release the “classified” evidence by which it claims to have proven the 53rd Brigade responsible. (The other JIT members are Australia, Belgium, Ukraine and Malaysia, but Malaysia was excluded until November 2014, by which time the other members had cemented control of the investigation.) Ukraine’s presence proves that the investigation is not impartial, as Ukraine is the other possible “suspect” in the incident; moreover, each member can veto the release of evidence, which gives Ukraine enormous influence over the investigation. The only publicly available evidence in this regard are several low-resolution photographs and videos collected from social media by the British internet sleuthing group Bellingcat, which has ties to both British Intelligence and the Atlantic Council; and unverifiable alleged telephone intercepts supplied to the JIT by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU)—as if Russian soldiers on a secret mission would converse on unencrypted telephones. Data supporting then-US Secretary of State John Kerry’s 12 August 2014 claim that US intelligence officers had observed the shoot-down live (“We saw the take-off, we saw the trajectory, we saw the hit, we saw this aeroplane disappear from the radar screens”) remains conspicuously absent. Ukraine claims that all its radars, both civilian and military, were shut down for maintenance on the day.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke, when asked how the new Mahathir government would respond to the JIT’s claim, told Singaporean news broadcaster Channel NewsAsia on 30 May 2018: “There is no conclusive evidence to point at Russia, under the JIT evidence. And of course we have to take into account our diplomatic relations, and so on. So any further actions [sanctions etc.] will be based on conclusive evidence.”
The identification of the weapon used as a modern type of Russian “Buk” mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, with a unique warhead known as a type 9N314M, hinges upon three distinctive bowtie-shaped fragments allegedly recovered from the wreckage of MH17. Of the 7,800 pre-formed fragments per warhead, 2,600 (one third) are of the bowtie or “double-T” type, and test detonations show that they leave hundreds of distinctive holes of the same shape. MH17, however, displays no such damage; thus if it had been brought down by a Buk (and not another of the 20-odd types of SAM theoretically available to either side of the Ukrainian civil war), it could only have been an older model without the bowtie fragments. Russia decommissioned and disposed of the last of its older Buks in 2011, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces still use them. Local television broadcasts showed several Ukrainian Buks deployed in the area where MH17 was shot down, a few days prior to the event, and evidence put forward by the Russian Ministry of Defence in late July 2014 showed a high level of activity by “Kupol” radars, a component of the older Buk launch systems, on 17 July when the tragedy occurred. Given Ukraine’s track record of accidentally shooting down a civilian airliner by locking radar on the wrong plane during training exercises (the downing of Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 over the Black Sea in October 2001 killed all 78 aboard), and in view of the tumultuous state of affairs within its military units in the months after the February 2014 coup and the outbreak of civil strife in the Donbass, the Ukrainian military should have been considered as possible perpetrators.
Russia has not blocked international investigation of the MH17 tragedy. To the contrary, Russia co-initiated UN Security Council Resolution 2166, adopted 21 July 2014 (four days after the crash), which set forth requirements for an open and transparent investigation under UN auspices and demanded that “those responsible for this incident be held to account”. Instead, Russia was excluded from the JIT and its evidence ignored. Only a full year later, on 29 July 2015, when the direction of the forthcoming JIT “findings” was already apparent, did Russia exercise its UNSC veto to block a resolution drafted by the JIT countries on setting up an international tribunal to prosecute those allegedly responsible. Russia nonetheless continues to offer cooperation in a proper investigation under UNSC Res. 2166.
For a free copy of the latest edition of the Australian Alert Service, the weekly publication of the CEC, including the articles “Enemies of peace erupt over Trump-Putin summit”, and “Putin-Trump Helsinki meeting was beneficial for the world”, leave ALL details below, or call Toll-Free on 1800 636 432.
https://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?id=free_AAS_latest.html
Healthy Gut, Happy Life: Learn How To Make Your Own Water Kefir
In this video, Felicity teaches us about water kefir and how you can make your own at home. Learn to make your own coconut water kefir which has living probiotics to help gut health leading to better overall wellness.
https://www.foodmatters.com/article/healthy-gut-happy-life-learn-how-tomake-your-own-water-kefir
Russiagate Is Constructed of Pure Bullshit, No Facts
July 19, 2018
Paul Craig Roberts
All day today the presstitute scum at NPR went on and on about President Trump, using every kind of guest and issue to set him up for more criticism as an unfit occupant of the Oval Office, because, and only because, he threatens the massive budget of the military/security complex by attempting to normalize relations with Russia. The NPR scum even got an ambassador from Montenegro on the telephone and made every effort to goad the ambassador into denouncing Trump for saying that Montenegro had strong and aggressive people capable of defending themselves and were not in need of sending the sons of American families to defend them. Somehow this respectful compliment about the Monenegro people was supposed to be an insult. The ambassador refused to be put into opposition to Trump. NPR kept trying, but got nowhere.
As a former Wall Street Journal editor I can say with complete confidence that NPR crossed every line between journalism and advocacy and no longer qualifies as a 501c3 tax-exempt public foundation.
The NPR assault on President Trummp was part of an orchestration. The same story appeared in the Washington Post, long-believed to be a CIA asset. Most likely, it has appeared throughtout the presstitute media. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/19/after-being-called-aggressive-by-trump-montenegro-insists-its-a-friend-to-america/?utm_term=.b1d275cccd8e
The ability of the military/security complex to control the explanations given to Americans, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 to no effect, has produced an American population, a large percentage of which is brainwashed.
For example, in Caitln Johnston’s column, linked below, Kurt Eichenwald, who, in my opinion, is either a brainwashed idiot or a Deep State troll, says that the bottom line is that you either believe “our intelligence community,” which most definitely did not conclude what Eichenwald says they have concluded, “or you support Putin. You are either a patriot, a traitor or an idiot.”
Note that Eichenwald defines a patriot, as do the Democrats, many Republicans, the entirely of the US print and TV media and NPR, as a person who believes the self-serving lies issuing from the military/security complex in support of the $1,000 billion dollars annually taken from unmet US taxpayer needs to put in the pockets of the mega-rich for “defending” American from an orchestrated, but otherwise nonexistent, threat. If you don’t support this theft from the American people, you are, according to Eichenwald, “a traitor or an idiot.”
Caitlain Johnstone tells us how utterly stupid Americans are to fall for the line that it is treason to seek peaceful relations with a nuclear power that can destroy us. This means that presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan were treasonous. This is the official position of the American presstitute media, the Democratic Party, and the military/security complex. It is also the position of a fake entity that misrepresents itself as “the American left.”
This utterly absurd position that to pursue peace is to commit treason is precisely the position that the corrupt American print and TV media and NPR represent. It is the position of the Democratic Party. It is the position of the Republians in Congress, such as the warmongers John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are owned by the military/security complex.
Every American who believes the line that reducing tensions with Russia is treasonous is preparing nuclear Armageddon for themselves, their friends and families, and for the entire world.
Caitlin tells it to you like it is: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-is-like-9-11-except-its-made-of-pure-narrative-ab96fa38ee48
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/19/russiagate-is-constructed-of-pure-bullshit-no-facts/
NO Vaccine Safety Studies
The biggest story of the last 30 years – the fact that the HHS was required to do safety testing of vaccines and report on it every 2 years to congress. Instead, they did NOTHING and congress let them get away with it.
http://icandecide.org/government/ICAN-HHS-Stipulated-Order-July-2018.pdf
Stem Cell Breakthroughs
You may already be aware that I have several ingredients in my top bars and powders that boost the release of stem cells from the bones (and when I get back to Sydney plan on making a NutriBlast stem cell formula for two people who have requested it) so I thought you might be interested in this video series that explains why I am so excited to have these ingredients in my products and their potential for your good health.
https://www.stemcelldocuseries.com/optin/